Asia Times: Gambit to link Iran to the Taliban backfires

[seafan]

Gambit to link Iran to the Taliban backfires

By Gareth Porter
June 13, 2007

WASHINGTON - A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban fighting US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates in the US administration of a more confrontational stance toward Iran, appears to have backfired. Last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.

The allegation that Iran had reversed a decade-long policy and was now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting "senior officials" in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with US Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

.....

In the most dramatic version of the story, ABC reported "NATO officials" as saying they had "caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C-4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces".

Far from showing that Iran had been "caught red-handed", however, the report quoted from an analysis that cited only the interception in Afghanistan of a total of four vehicles coming from Iran with arms and munitions of Iranian origin. The report failed to refer to any evidence of Iranian government involvement.

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Another factor helping to explain the influx of arms from Iran, as noted by former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Momand in an interview on Pakistan's GEO Television on April 19, is that the Taliban now control areas on the Iranian border for the first time. Momand said the Taliban, who are awash in money from heroin exports to Iran, buy small quantities of weapons in Iran and smuggle them back into Afghanistan.

But the Iranian government itself is not involved in the trade in arms, Momand insisted.

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The fact that the officials making the accusation about Iran and Afghanistan are unwilling to go on the record and the refusal of Gates and McNeil to go along with it suggest an effort by Cheney and his allies in the administration to do an "end run" around official policy by conjuring up a regionwide Iranian offensive against US forces.

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The Cheney group is evidently arguing within the administration that the mere existence of contacts between Iranian intelligence and Taliban commanders, combined with the presence of arms or Iranian origin, is sufficient reason to conclude that Iran has changed its policy toward the Taliban.

That argument parallels a key assertion made by Cheney and other neo-conservative officials in constructing the case for war against Iraq in 2002.

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Cheney wants to attack Iran so badly, he can taste it. It's beyond time to impeach and convict this murderous ba$tard.

[babylonsister]

1. I'm all for everyone being aware of this, seafan. Cheney is

stoking the fire, but he has no real kindling. If we can just get that out, he'll be more irrelevant than he already is.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1112798

[autorank]

2. Gates has done this before, pushed plans down, off the road.I

From:
"Scoop" Independent News, 11 February 2007
"Brzenski on the Path to War with Iran"[/b>

The plan swings into action…blaming Iran

Gates Says Bombs Tie Iran to Iraq Extremists
Lolita Baldor Associated Press 9 Feb 2007

MUNICH, Germany (Feb. 9) - Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration's first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

Just a week after Brzezinski outlined the modus operandi for the Bush crew, the supposed voice of reason at the Pentagon is selling a story of Iranian subversion. Trying it out on the road in Munich, Germany before the homeland premier, Gates indicated that weapons were found with Iranian serial numbers.

Robert Gates on his European tour.

"I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found" that point to Iran, he said.

Gates' remarks left unclear how the U.S. knows the serial numbers are traceable to Iran and whether such weapons would have been sent to Iraq by the Iranian government or by private arms dealers.

Compare Gates’ tentative assertion to this whopper used to justify Gulf War I: “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die” said the Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter, who, by the way, had never seen anything of the sort. Gates’ tentative serial number claim is no way to whip up war fever. Even the AP reporter bluntly questioned his ability to know just what it is about those serial numbers that gives them that tell-tale Iranian look.