Posted on 04/17/2003 6:06:40 AM PDT by ZULU
U.S. Bombs Iranian Guerrilla Forces Based in Iraq By DOUGLAS JEHL
ASHINGTON, April 16 — American forces have bombed the bases of the main armed Iranian opposition group in Iraq, a guerrilla organization that maintained thousands of fighters with tanks and artillery along Iraq's border with Iran for more than a decade.
The group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States since 1997, and Bush administration officials said the group had supported Saddam Hussein's military. Still, the biggest beneficiary of the strikes will be the Iranian government, which has lost scores of soldiers in recent years to cross-border attacks by the guerrillas seeking to overthrow Iran's Islamic government.
Defense department officials who described the air attacks, which have received scant public attention, said they had been followed in recent days by efforts by American ground forces to pursue and detain members of the group and its National Liberation Army. Some members of the group were expected to surrender soon, the officials said today.
A senior American military officer said the United States had "bombed the heck" out of at least two of the Mujahedeen group's bases, including its military headquarters at Camp Ashraf, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
The only public acknowledgment of the attacks came on Tuesday, when Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with foreign reporters. In answer to a question, General Myers acknowledged bombing some camps, and said that American forces were "still pursuing elements" of the group inside Iraq.
"We're still interested in that particular group," he said. "How that will affect U.S.-Iranian relationships, I think we're going to have to wait until more time goes by."
The attacks could well anger the more than 150 members of Congress from both parties who have described the Iranian opposition group as an effective source of pressure against Iran's government. In a statement last November, the group urged the Bush administration to remove the organization from its terrorist list.
"We made it very clear that these folks are pro-democracy, antifundamentalism, antiterrorism, helpful to the U.S. in providing information about the activities of the Iranian regime, and advocates of a secular government in Iran," said Yleem Poblete, staff director for the House International Relations Committee's subcommittee on the Middle East and Asia.
"They are our friends, not our enemies," she said. "The fact that they are the main target of the Iranian regime says a lot about their effectiveness."
It was not clear today whether the attacks were intended in any way as a thank-you gesture by the United States for Iran's policy of noninterference in the war in Iraq.
At the White House and elsewhere, senior administration officials said today that the group had been bombed because its forces served as an extension of the Iraqi military and as a de facto security force for the old Iraqi government.
"These forces were fully integrated with Saddam Hussein's command and controls and therefore constituted legitimate military targets that posed a threat to coalition forces," a White House official said. A second administration official said that the attacks had not been intended as a gesture to the Iranian government, calling the camps "a logical and rational military target."
Still, the Bush administration has expressed relief at what it has generally described as Iran's path of noninterference in the American war in Iraq. American officials are believed to have met secretly with Iranian officials in the months before the war to urge Iran's government to maintain its neutrality.
In a telephone interview from Paris, Mohammad Mohaddessin, a top official of an Iranian opposition coalition that includes the Mujahedeen, confirmed that the bases had been attacked by the United States in what he called "an astonishing and regrettable act."
"It is a clear kowtowing to the demands of the Iranian regime," said Mr. Mohaddessin.
U.S. Bombs Iranian Guerrilla Forces Based in Iraq (Page 2 of 2)
Last August, a senior Iranian official, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was quoted by the official Iranian news service as urging American attacks on the group's bases.
"If the Americans spare the Mujahedeen's bases in Iraq during their general attacks on Iraq, then it shows a clear bias in their approach to terrorism," Mr. Rezai was quoted as saying. "On the other hand, if the Americans attack the Mujahedeen bases, this would in turn be considered a goodwill gesture toward us."
In a 1996 visit to one of the group's bases, a reporter saw evidence of a formidable force with an arsenal that included American-made armored personnel carriers and Chieftain tanks from Britain, secured from raids deep inside Iran in 1988.
In addition to Camp Ashraf, the group has two other bases in the general vicinity of Baghdad: Camp Alavi, near the city of Miqdadiyah, about 65 miles northeast of Baghdad; and Camp Anzali, near the city of Jalula, about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, and about 20 miles from the Iranian border. At least one of those bases was also hit in the American strikes, officials of the group said.
Recent estimates by the United States government have put the Mujahedeen Khalq at "several thousand fighters," nearly all of them based in Iraq.
Mr. Mohaddessin, the opposition official, said the group had abandoned four bases in southern Iraq before the American attack began, to demonstrate that it did not intend to interfere with American military operations. He said the group had been assured by "proper U.S. authorities" that its other camps would not be targets.
Mr. Mohaddessin declined to provide detailed information about the timing and extent of the American attacks, but he said there had been repeated air strikes. In recent days, he said, they had been followed by cross-border attacks on the group's fighters inside Iraq by Iranian forces, in which he said at least 28 of the organization's guerrillas had been killed.
Mr. Mohaddessin said hundreds of Iranian soldiers were now operating in Iraq, but offered no evidence to corroborate that claim.
The Mujahedeen Khalq was formed in the 1960's and expelled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In its most recent annual listing of terrorist groups, the State Department said of the group that "its history is studded with anti-Western attacks as well as terrorist attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad." During the 1970's, the report noted, the group killed several American military personnel and civilians working in Iran.
The decision by the Clinton administration to add the group to its list of terrorist organizations in 1997 was widely interpreted as a goodwill gesture to the Iranian government.
Alas, apparently this is not the case. Apparently, once again, the U.S. State Department is formulating pie-in-sky policy, based on the mistaken belief that gratitude can be anticipated from vipers.
After perusing the above, just mosy over to http://www.tehrantimes.com to see just how "grateful" the Ayatollahs are towards to the U.S. as a result of this latest, idiotic adventure of ours.
Great job, Colin Powell!! This even beats your act at the U.N. Security Council, actually expecting the Frogs, Krauts and Russkis to back us, or your phenomenally successfull junket to southeast Asai where you were laughed off the continent by the anti-American vipers over there.
Most likely they were Ba'athists who were trying to replace the totalitarian government of Iran with their own totalitarian regime.
If they were simply good-hearted advocates of freedom, why would they fight alongside their Ba'athist hosts?
Be a little more critical in your thinking.
Based on that famous survey last year, the vast majority of Iranians understand this. Our task over the next few years will be to carefully coax Iran into a (hopefully but probably not) peaceful counter-revolution. If Bush has another five and a half and not just one and a half years in office, I believe we will see it happen.
We are going to be paying for everything that idiot peanut farmer did to our foreign policy long after he has fed a thousand generations of worms.
IMHO it's a fact of life that what happens and who runs things in that region affects this country very deeply. Whatever you wish to call it, the United States has global economic interests which a global military must protect. We can try to influence a pivotal part of a pivotal region or we can allow the Russians, the Chinese, and the Europeans to handle things. If you want to call that "imperialism" so be it. I call it protecting one's national interests and security.
According to Col. Hunt, yes.
Given the Islamicists tendency to kiss and make up whenever they get the opportunity to strike against the West, this strike could have its own rewards.
And if it really promotes Iraqi stability, that would seem to me to more than cancel out any percieved short-term benefit to Iran.
And when you think about past criticisms of US foreign policy, they often center around using freindly despots to overthrow unfreindly despots. This could represent a whole new strategy, long term. We don't need any help from scum like these mujahadeen, or the PLO, or France.
Then again, I may be way off. Just speculating on the positive spin.
Rumsfeld Warns Syria, Iranian Badr Corps Not to Interfere in Iraq (Says Iraqis should memorize names, faces of "death squad" members) (950)
By Jacquelyn S. Porth Washington File Security Affairs Correspondent
Washington -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent a warning March 28 to two of Iraq's neighbors -- Syria and Iran -- not to interfere in coalition efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
He told reporters at the Pentagon that military supplies, including night vision equipment, are being sent into Iraq from Syria and "we would like it to stop" because any such assistance could result in the loss of lives and the prolongation of conflict. He also warned the Iranian-sponsored Badr Corps not to interfere with coalition military operations inside Iraq lest its members be considered "as combatants."
"We have information that shipments of military supplies are crossing the border from Syria into Iraq, including night vision goggles," said Rumsfeld, who described the transfers as "trafficking." Such deliveries "pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces," he added.
The United States considers this kind of trafficking to be "hostile acts," Rumsfeld said, "and will hold the government of Syria accountable for such shipments." The movement of military materiel and equipment between Syria and Iraq "vastly complicates our situation," he added.
Asked more about the Badr Corps, Rumsfeld said there are reports of numbers in the hundreds operating in Iraq and more on the other side of the border. He described the corps as "the military wing of the Supreme Council on Islamic Revolution in Iraq" and said it is "trained, equipped and directed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard." As yet, he said, the corps has not done anything that would be perceived by the coalition as hostile. But "the entrance into Iraq by military forces, intelligence personnel or proxies not under the direct operational control of [U.S. Central Command Commander] General [Tommy] Franks will be taken as a potential threat to coalition forces," he said.
Rumsfeld said the coalition would hold the Iranian government responsible for the corps' actions, and armed Badr corps members found in Iraq "will have to be treated as combatants."
[snip]
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
What if one of the 'other considerations' is that the group in question is on the US' list of terrorist organizations?
Until this war began, the Mujahedeen Khalq was our enemy's friend -- they were in Iraq with Saddam's blessing, and he was their main benefactor.
Although the pro-MK bloc in Congress calls the organization pro-democracy, the group's ideology in truth appears to be a mixture of Islamism and Marxism (the combination of which was deemed unacceptable by the mullahs, thus ensuring the organization's exclusion from the government).
P.S. They supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran in 1979.
Resources supporting the terrorist organization designation:
Terrorism Q&A
TerrorismFiles.org
Terrorist Group Profiles
Then again, a website sponsored by the organization itself appears to indicate that they've softened a bit politically:
National Council of Resistance of Iran
Not sure what to think now. I do believe that there's more to this than meets the eye.
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