The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

[Andre II]

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece


Please also check out what happened on March 27, 2007:

The U.S. Navy on Tuesday began its largest demonstration of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by a pair of aircraft carriers and backed by warplanes flying simulated attack maneuvers off the coast of Iran.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032700610.html

[Amonester]

1. No doubt the OIL + PNAC criminal dominionists also want Iran's oil.

And they don't care one bit about who, and how many, will die a horrible death, or survive for a sick and/or handicapped life for the rest of their existence.
:grr:

NO BLOOD FOR OIL

[NNN0LHI]

5. US/UK have controlled Irans natural resources in the past

Its just a matter of time until they try their best to control it again.

Don

[spoony]

2. Tit-for-tat is not the path to peace

Iran is making the dance far easier for warhawks by not dragging their feet. They need to stand down too.

[soothsayer]

3. at least Iran's not biting at our intrusions into their air space.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Read a detailed recap of this on the USAToday site..

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/04/paper_iran_seiz.html

"The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan," according to the Independent, which says there is "no doubt" that Iran believes the two men were the targets of the raid.

Bush approved raids