-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 23, 2007 6:41:08 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Iran = Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda = Militants in Gaza & West
Bank, Lebanon & Syria
New Iran Arms Claim Reveals Cheney-Military Rift
by Gareth Porter
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=11168
In a development that underlines the tensions between the anti-Iran
agenda of the George W. Bush administration and the preoccupation
of its military command in Afghanistan with militant [anti-Iran]
Sunni activism, a State Department official publicly accused Iran
for the first time of arming the Taliban forces last week, but the
US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan rejected that charge for
the second time in less than two weeks.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns declared in Paris June 12
that Iran was "transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan,"
putting it in the context of a larger alleged Iranian role of
funding "extremists" in the Palestinian territories, Syria and
Lebanon <<all of Israel's opponents>> as well as Iraq. The
following day he asserted there was "irrefutable evidence" of such
Iranian arms supply to the Taliban.
The use of the phrase "irrefutable evidence" suggested that the
Burns statement was scripted by the office of Vice President Dick
Cheney. The same phrase had been used by Cheney himself on Sep. 20,
2002, in referring to the administration's accusation that <Al
Qaeda and Iraq were conspiring together and> Saddam Hussein had a
program to enrich uranium as the basis for a nuclear weapon.
But the NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeill, pointed to
other possible explanations, particularly the link between drug
smuggling and weapons smuggling between Iran and Afghanistan.
Gen. McNeill repeated in an interview with US News and World Report
last week a previous statement to Reuters that he did not agree
with the charge. McNeill minimized the scope of the arms coming
from Iran, saying: "What we've found so far hasn't been militarily
significant on the battlefield."
He speculated that the arms could have come from black market
dealers, drug traffickers, or al-Qaeda backers and could have been
sold by low-level Iranian military personnel.
McNeill's remarks underlined the US command's knowledge of the link
between the heroin trade and trafficking in arms between
southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. The main entry point
for opium and heroin smuggling between Afghanistan and Iran runs
through the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan to the capital
of Zahedan. The two convoys of arms which were intercepted by NATO
forces last spring had evidently come through that Iranian province.
According to a report by Robert Tait of the Guardian Feb. 17,
Sistan-Baluchistan province has also been the setting for frequent
violent incidents involving militant Sunni groups and drug
traffickers. Tait reported that more than 3,000 Iranian security
personnel had been killed in armed clashes with drug traffickers
since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
McNeill further appeared to suggest in the interview with US News
that not all the arms coming from the Iranian side of the border
were necessarily Iranian-made. Munitions in one convoy, he said,
"were without a whole lot of doubt in my mind Iranian made,"
implying that the origins of the arms was not clear in other cases.
McNeill's rejection of Burns' accusation reflected the views of
Afghanistan's Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, who told
Associated Press on Jun. 14 that it was "difficult" to link the
arms traffic to the Iranian government. Wardak said the arms "might
be from al-Qaeda, from the drug mafia or from other sources."
The clash between key civilian officials and the command in
Afghanistan over the explanation for the arms entering Afghanistan
from Iran followed a series of news stories in late May and early
June quoting an anonymous administration official as claiming proof
of a change in Iranian policy to one of military support for the
Taliban. These anonymous statements of certainty about such a
policy shift, for which no intelligence has ever been claimed,
pointed to Cheney's office as the orchestrater of the campaign.
Given the very small scale of the arms in question, Cheney's
interest in the issue appears to have much less to do with
Afghanistan than his aim of ensuring that President Bush goes along
with the neoconservative desire to attack Iran before the end of
his term.
The US military command in Afghanistan, on the other hand, sees the
external threat in Afghanistan coming from Pakistan rather than
from Iran. US commanders there are very concerned about the
increase in Taliban attacks launched from Pakistan's North
Waziristan and South Waziristan following Pakistani Prime Minister
Pervez Musharraf's truce with Islamic separatists in those border
provinces last year.
McNeill told a press conference Jun. 5 that there can be no "long-
term stability" in Afghanistan "if there are sanctuaries just out
of reach for both the alliance and the Afghan national security
forces that harbor insurgents."
Apparently reflecting Cheney's dominant influence on policy, the
Bush administration has continued to defend the Musharraf
government's policy of compromise with the Pakistani Islamists and
has said nothing publicly about the rise in Taliban attacks
launched from Pakistan or the massive arms flow from Pakistan to
Taliban forces.
US military officials in Afghanistan could be expected to be
skeptical about an anti-Iran propaganda line aimed at making it
more difficult for Bush to resist neocon pressures for a war
against Iran. An attack on Iran could only make the task of coping
with the threat from the Taliban <and the REAL Al Qaeda> more
difficult.
Burns, who served in senior positions in the Bill Clinton
administration, is part of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
team, which is resisting Cheney's pressures for preparations for an
attack on Iran. But the Burns statements came during a visit to
France that was aimed at ensuring the French government would
support tougher sanctions against Iran in the United Nations
Security Council if Iran did not suspend enrichment of uranium
within a week or two.
So Rice apparently agreed to the new accusation against Iran in
order to strengthen the US argument for tougher sanctions – an
administration policy with which she and Burns have both been
identified since late 2005.
Meanwhile, despite the public statement by Burns indicting Iran,
both the State Department and Defense Department appear to have
adopted a more ambiguous position on the issue. In the daily press
briefing by State Department on Jun. 13, spokesman Sean McCormack
did not claim that Iran has actually changed its policy toward the
Taliban, much less support the "irrefutable evidence" language used
by Burns.
"At this point we can't make that assessment," McCormack said in
regard to a change in Iranian policy. Asked by reporters to explain
the categorical language used by Burns, McCormack offered the
rather awkward explanation that Burns was merely expressing the
"concerns and suspicions" that everyone in the administration had
about Iran's intentions. That remark effectively undercut the use
of the headline-grabbing language by Burns, but was buried in media
coverage of Burns' remarks.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was then on his way to a
NATO meeting on Afghanistan, did not repeat a previous dismissal of
the charge of Iran's arming the Taliban, but also failed to endorse
the language used by Burns.
"I would say, given the quantities [of arms] that we're seeing, it
is difficult to believe that it's associated with smuggling or the
drug business, or that it's taking place without the knowledge of
the Iranian government," Gates said.
However, Gates, who had denied on June 4 that there was any
evidence linking the arms trade to Iran, made the significant
admission that he had seen no new intelligence supporting such
speculation.
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