Today Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice bluntly warned Iran not to interfere with the renewed American efforts to stabilize Iraq. Using significant terms such as "regional aggression" to describe Iran's activities in Iraq, Rice made the salient point that the Iranian government will be held accountable for terrorist activity in Iraq, and that the orders for IEDs, snipers, or "insurgent" attacks are coming from Tehran. She could not have stated more clearly the administration’s plans for the troop increase, yet she never spelled out the true purpose for the troop buildup: confronting Iran.
Approximately 6 hours prior to Rice's official statement this morning, multinational forces in Iraq reportedly raided the Iranian diplomatic mission in Arbil, capturing 6 Iranians and securing computers and documents believed to link Iran with ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq. The significance of such an action, coming the day following President Bush’s assurance that new tactics would be implemented to stabilize Iraq, should not be underestimated.
A military raid on a diplomatic mission is considered an aggressive act against the nation operating the mission, and is not conducted at the discretion of rank-and-file military officers. A foreign mission, like an embassy, is generally considered to be virtually sovereign soil of the nation quartered in the mission. An assault on a diplomatic mission, even if it clearly is being used to coordinate terrorist activity, is still the equivalent of a raid on the nation itself. Such a potentially provocative action was certainly was not taken without approval at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. The gloves are apparently coming off, and it appears the focus of American efforts to stabilize Iraq will be to confront Iran directly, engaging Iranian terrorists found stirring up the “insurgency” in Iraq and obtaining incontrovertible evidence of Iranian participation in attacks on American and multinational forces in Iraq.
Iraq will never be stable and secure until Iran’s interference there is eliminated. Iran’s interference there will continue until Ahmadinejad is confronted directly on his nation’s role as perhaps the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and he is forced to terminate Iran’s nuclear weapons development programs. Ahmadinejad has made his intentions all too clear: acquire nuclear weapons and use them to wipe Israel off the map and then destroy America. The world failed to take Hitler at his word for too long, and a Holocaust occurred (though Ahmadinejad believes it was a hoax). American and its allies should take Ahmadinejad at his word.
The troop buildup and more aggressive tactics such as the raid on the Iranian mission in Arbil, are steps in the right direction for securing and stabilizing Iraq. Once Iranian interference and terrorist funding/training are effectively cut off, the world will get a much more accurate view of the real situation in Iraq and who has been fomenting the so-called religious “civil war.” Secretary Rice and this administration surely know that Iranian operatives will be found frequently and in large numbers in Iraq, and those operatives, acting as agents of Tehran, will provide a legitimate justification to for America to engage Iran directly as the primary enemy in the War on Terror.
Technorati Tags: Iraq War War On Terror Iraq Ahmadinejad Bush Administration Condoleeza Rice Iranian Nuclear Program Arbil
No comments:
Post a Comment