By Trevor Royle
Sunday Herald, 09 October 2005
IN the war of words which broke out between Britain and Iran last week one salient fact emerged. Once again, the spat was being triggered by the existence of specific weapons - in this case "shaped charge" ordnance which can penetrate heavy armour - and once again there were two very different versions of what was actually happening.
The weapons in question are sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which are triggered by infrared tripwires, similar to the alarms used to protect bank safes or valuable items in museums. At a press briefing earlier in the week a Foreign Office official was quite explicit on this point: the new IEDs were being used in southern Iraq to attack and kill British troops - six soldiers have been killed since July - and they were definitely being supplied by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
But at the same time British military sources were being more circumspect. "We can't be definite about this one, " a senior officer told the Sunday Herald. "The force of the explosions is so great that there's very little left in the way of clues to let us know the weapons' provenance. In any case, you can find all you want to know about how to build them on the internet."
Of more pressing concern to the British garrison in Basra is the continuing infiltration of the local police forces by insurgents or members of the Shia militias. The week ended with a dragnet operation which rounded up 12 Iraqis suspected of taking part in terrorist attacks on British soldiers.
Among those arrested were a number of policemen, and the revelation brought a sharp rebuke from Britain's senior commander Brigadier John Lorimer: "Some of the individuals we have arrested are linked to militia groups in Basra - and some are members of the Basra police service."
The Americans were also playing their cards carefully.
Asked in Washington if there was any official Iranian involvement in arms supplies to Iraq, the Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita replied: "That I am not aware of."
Brigadier General Carter Ham, US deputy director for regional operations, was equally concise when asked the same question. While he conceded that bombmaking equipment was probably being smuggled into Iraq, he denied knowledge of any Iranian complicity in the operations: "It's not known to the best of my understanding."
Quite apart from making the existence (or otherwise) of destructive weapons central to British policy towards an Islamic country, the allegation has created a worrying breach in relations with Iran. Not so long ago, Britain pursued a live-and-let-live strategy with Tehran, arguing that it was preferable to maintain a dialogue than take steps which would lead to confrontation.
Foreign secretary Jack Straw praised Iran as "an emerging democracy" and he was central to EU efforts to develop and maintain close ties with the country. The reason was simple: Iran was pushing ahead with the development of nuclear power and there were fears that this would lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
While the US threatened military action or the imposition of economic sanctions to prevent this development, the British and the Europeans favoured a policy of detente and discussion. Even the election of the hardline new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not persuade the Europeans to alter their opinion and last month EU members were instrumental in blocking US threats for the matter to be referred to the United Nations Security Council for punishment by sanctions. Now all that has changed.
With one Foreign Office briefing and one statement by the prime minister, Iran is no longer considered a beacon of stability in the Middle East but a warmonger supplying deadly weapons to kill British and coalition troops, not to mention the thousands of Iraqi civilians who have also fallen victim to the new generation of IEDs.
When Tony Blair accused Iran of supplying those weapons to insurgents in southern Iraq his words were unambiguous: the new explosive devices "lead us either to Iranian elements or Hezbollah", the Iranian-backed terrorist group in Lebanon. At the same time Iranian officials were equally adamant that their hands were clean. Iran's ambassador in London, Dr Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli, said the charges "cannot be supported by either any political analyst or any concrete evidence" and added that his country is "against any kind of action which might jeopardise or destroy the stabilisation process of Iraq".
Dr Adeli's line was given support when the Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari distanced himself from Blair's allegations by claiming that the charges were "without foundation" and that "relations between Iran and Iraq are friendly and progressing".
The true position is far from clear. For some time now British military intelligence has been aware that Iranian Shi'ites have been infiltrating southern Iraq on the pretext of meeting their fellow religionists or going on pilgrimages to Shia holy places.
By and large, coalition security forces have been happy to allow this traffic to continue unhindered. They lack the personnel on the ground to intercept the Iranians or block border crossings and in any case, there has never been any specific evidence that the "pilgrims" were smuggling arms. "Quiet rumours and off-the-record comments suggest that such agents are rather more numerous than is being reported in the press - but that is only natural, " wrote Daniel Neep, head of the Middle East Programme at the Royal United Services Institute when the cross-border traffic was first revealed. "After all, every country has an interest in knowing what's happening on the other side of the border."
There is also the question of whose interests are served by Iran supplying weapons to the insurgents. In the south, the Shia majority are their allies and in central Iraq the insurgency is being conducted by Sunnis and former Baath Party members who are determined to prevent Shia hegemony. It is difficult to find any reason why Iran would want to foster violence ahead of this week's constitutional referendum in Iraq and there is no evidence to suggest that Iran is intent on destabilising the present interim administration. A victory for the Shia factions would be likely to lead to the new government building friendly links with its near neighbour and there would be nothing to gain by souring that relationship.
It is possible that Iran might want to draw attention away from its nuclear weapons programme by causing trouble in Iraq but, again, it is not easy to see what might be gained by following that course of action at a time when they under such intense international scrutiny.
Ever since President Bush declared Iran to be part of the so- called "axis of evil", Iranian diplomats have been aware of US hostility towards their country and have become accustomed to the occasional sabre-rattling in Washington.
What has taken them aback in the past week is that Britain has taken the lead in accusing them of damaging regional stability. The Iranians countered Blair's accusations by claiming that British special forces had been fomenting trouble by supporting "some terrorist elements who crossed the Iranian border and were behind some explosions in southern parts of Iran". This was a reference to earlier unconfirmed reports that British SAS soldiers had crossed over into Iran in pursuit of arms smugglers.
One thing is irrefutable. Both the British and the US armed forces in Iraq have been alarmed by the increase in the number and power of the IEDs that have been used by Iraqi insurgents with considerable success against their armoured vehicles. The bombs have become more lethal and their armour-piercing "shaped charge" characteristics mean that they are capable of destroying even the most formidable armoured vehicles.
Local intelligence suggests that the bombs are made in secret workshops in Iraq to designs supplied by Hezbollah and that trained military personnel still loyal to Saddam are involved in the process.
"The enemy is evolving and constantly innovating, " says Brigadier General Josef Votel, who leads the US army's IED Defeat Task Force. "If there were any thoughts that this is a rudimentary and unsophisticated enemy, those thoughts have been replaced."
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Citation: Trevor Royle. "Bombings: confusion and contradiction over Iran's role," Sunday Herald, 09 October 2005.
Original URL: http://www.sundayherald.com/print52184
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