Posted on 09/23/2007 4:58:15 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BAGHDAD - The U.S. military accused Iran on Sunday of smuggling surface-to-air missiles and other advanced weapons into Iraq for use against American troops. The new allegations came as Iraqi leaders condemned the latest U.S. detention of an Iranian in northern Iraq, saying the man was in their country on official business.
Military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said U.S. troops were continuing to find Iranian-supplied weaponry including the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an infrared guidance system.
Other advanced Iranian weaponry found in Iraq includes the RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade, 240 mm rockets and armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, Fox said.
An American soldier was killed Saturday and another wounded when an EFP hit their patrol in eastern Baghdad, the military said.
Iran has denied U.S. allegations that it is smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, a denial that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" aired Sunday.
"We don't need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity," said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday to attend the U.N. General Assembly. "The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests."
Tensions between Iran and the United States have worried Iraqi officials — many of whom are members of political parties with close ties to Tehran.
A 240 mm rocket was fired this month at the main U.S. headquarters base in Iraq, killing one person and wounding 11.
U.S. officials said the rocket was fired from a west Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.
On Thursday, U.S. troops arrested an Iranian in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. U.S. officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that smuggles weapons into Iraq.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the Iranian's arrest, saying he understood the man, who has been identified as Mahmudi Farhadi, had been invited to Iraq.
"The government of Iraq is an elected one and sovereign. When it gives a visa, it is responsible for the visa," he told The Associated Press in an interview in New York. "We consider the arrest ... of this individual who holds an Iraqi visa and a (valid) passport to be unacceptable."
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, also demanded the Iranian's release.
The U.S. military said the suspect was being questioned about "his knowledge of, and involvement in," the transportation of EFPs and other roadside bombs from Iran into Iraq and "his facilitation of travel and training in Iran for Iraqi insurgents." The military said no decision had been made about whether to file charges.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Farhadi was in charge of border transactions in western Iran and went to Iraq on an official invitation.
He said Iran expects the Iraqi government to provide security for Iranian nationals there and warned the arrest could affect relations between the two neighbors as well.
Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, said a shipment of chlorine had crossed the border from Jordan after concerns were raised about shortages of the chemical needed to prevent an outbreak of cholera from spreading.
Officials said earlier that as much as 100,000 tons of chlorine was being held up at the border for fear it would be hijacked and used in explosives. Several chlorine truck bombs blamed on suspected Sunni insurgents earlier this year killed scores of people.
Naeem al-Qabi, the deputy chief of Baghdad's municipal council, said warehouses in the capital were preparing to accept the chlorine, which would help purify water supplies.
"There is some administrative work needed to be done and it will be finished very soon," al-Qabi said.
Iraq now has a total of 1,652 confirmed cases of cholera after three new cases were confirmed in Salahuddin province, according to an update on the World Health Organization's Web site on Sunday. Earlier, cholera was confirmed in the provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Tamim and Irbil, as well as a case each in Baghdad and in Basra.
"As the weather cools and becomes more favorable for transmission, the organism is expected to spread to other provinces," the WHO's country office in Iraq said on its Web site.
Cholera is endemic to Iraq, with about 30 cases registered each year. The last major outbreak was in 1999, when 20 cases were discovered in one day.
Also Sunday, Iraq's minister of state for national security, Sherwan al-Waili, took over the security operations center in Basra as tensions rose in the southern city following the assassination of a local representative of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The region has been rocked by violence between rival Shiite militias linked to political parties, raising concerns about security as the British military has pulled back its troops from the city center to a nearby airport to allow Iraqi security forces to take over.
Al-Waili told reporters that he will temporarily head the operations center until a new security plan is implemented "very soon" in the city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.
A family crosses from Iran into Iraq at the Zarbatiya border crossing, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007. U.S. soldiers are stepping up their training of Iraqi border guards in this sparsely populated mountainous area southeast of Baghdad, believed to be a major route for weapons and fighters slipping into the country from Iran. (AP Photo/Kim Gamel)
A U.S. soldier dances during a Hawaiian party at Camp Loyalty in Baghdad September 23, 2007. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (IRAQ)
GO USA!
But Mahmoud told Scott Pelly that it was a lie that his country was supplying any weapons to the terrorists in Iraq. Surely everybody believed him. cBS put that goat humper on as if he were royalty.
We should return Iran’s STA missiles to I’monaJihad while he’s 2,000 feet over the Atlantic next week.
What a bold face liar he is...of course, he doesn’t want a war with the US...NOT TO WORRY...he’ll not have nothin’ left when we finish with the fanatical regime...5000 targest 2000 lite up...
In response leading Democrats have called the military leaders that are saying these things traitors and liars about the peace loving people of Iran and further argued that this type of rhetoric is simply more the Bush regimes attempts at starting war with Iran for even more oil....
The PG-29V round has a tandem-charge HEAT warhead
for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA). Eight fins
pop out as the rocket leaves the launch tube and stabilize
the missile in flight.
And that murderous SOB is headed here to the USA!! I had oral surgery on Thursday, this is enough to cause me to blow my stitches!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hold the deaths of these dear American troops personally on Ahmadinajhad’s sorry, terrorist head! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY!!! Okay, my brother-in-law is a veterinarian. I’m going to ask that he saves all his patients’ neutered testicles so I CAN SEND THEM TO WASHINGTON!!!! Apparently, they need some balls!!!!!!
So let’s return the favor and send some missles into Iran.
FR thread:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1895736/posts
General: Rocket Linked With Iran Used In Attack
http://kutv.com/topstories/topstories_story_256054601.html
(AP) BAGHDAD A fatal attack launched two days ago against the headquarters garrison of the American military in Iraq was carried out using a 240 mm rocket—a type of weapon provided to Shiite extremists by Iran, a U.S. general said Thursday.
One person was killed and a dozen were wounded during the “indirect fire” attack Tuesday against Camp Victory, which includes the headquarters of Multinational Forces-Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said the rocket was launched from a populated area in the Rasheed district of west Baghdad, which he said was infiltrated by the Mahdi Army militia of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Bergner said the rocket was a type of weapon that Shiite groups “have received from Iranian sources in the past and used against coalition forces.”
Camp Victory, a huge area located near Baghdad International Airport, has occasionally come under fire but attacks with such a large number of casualties and with such sophisticated weapons are rare.
Maybe when the Iranian leader flies in, we should offer him offer him some cookies and discuss this with him.
Just saw on Fox’s website that the SOB is already here.
Iran sends missles to kill us, and we allow him to our College.
Hmpf.
Well, in as much as evidence links IAmANutJob to the Iranian Embassy attack, it would be nice to see Bush show enough guts to arrest the guy and put him on trial.
Won't that be da bommm...
I swear, these people that attend these colleges and universities are really detached from reality. They live in a fantasy world in their little sheltered learning institutions.
Maybe we need to send Iran some “replacement” missiles.
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