Sunday, May 25, 2008

Iran Paid for Attacks on British Troops   [J. Peter Pham]

The Telegraph reports today that a confidential field report from a British officer who served in Basra details how hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid by Iran to insurgents to attack British forces in the southern city. The report, which was leaked to the newspaper, was authored by Maj. Christopher Job of the 2nd Lancashire Regiment based on intelligence from 25 sources, including a former Iraqi army general, prominent businessmen, local sheikhs, and council leaders. Among recipients of the Islamic Republic's largesse was the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM, the "Mahdi Army"), led by Muqtada al-Sadr. According to Major Job:

We learnt from a number of our Key Leadership Engagements [local contacts] that the source of the problem was the level of unemployment in Basra. JAM, using funding from Iran, paid the unemployed youths in the region of $300 per month to attack Multi National Forces. We also learnt that JAM had a drugs culture and that youths literally got hooked on being associated with JAM.

The Telegraph also quoted another senior British officer who recently returned from Iraq to the effect that "the existence of 'Iranian finance teams' in Basra was widely known by the British military and Foreign Office, although always officially denied." This other officer added, "It suited Iran to arm JAM in order to allow them to have the means to hit us."

Perhaps, as a certain U.S. presidential candidate with limited foreign policy experience and no military service whatsoever might suggest, the two British officers were not sufficiently committed to "tough, direct diplomacy without preconditions" with the Iranians offering bounties to the killers of the men under their command. 

05/25 01:19 PMShare