Iran 'behind Green Zone attack'

[Steve Gardner]

These hawks are relentless, aren't they? It's as though if they simply keep repeating that Iran is responsible, the accusation will acquire some legitimacy and stick.

What doesn't get reported - at least, not by the mainstream media - is that the US is working with organisations they themselves have classified as 'terrosits' in order to destablise Iran. Is it really such a stretch of the imagination to see that these groups could well be responsible for these attacks, and that they were acting at the behest of the US? It is, after all, a tried and tested method.

Every time I hear of some alleged Iranian or Iranian-sponsored wrongdoing, I'm reminded of the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor under President Carter.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Source: BBC

The most senior US general in Iraq has said he has evidence that Iran was behind Sunday's bombardment of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Gen David Petraeus told the BBC he thought Tehran had trained, equipped and funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets.

He said Iran was adding what he described as "lethal accelerants" to a very combustible mix.

There has as yet been no response from Iran to the accusations.

In response to the news that 4,000 US military personnel have now been killed in Iraq, he said it showed how much the mission had cost but added that Americans were realistic about it.

He also said a great deal of progress had been made because of the "flipping" of communities - the decision by Sunni tribes to turn against al-Qaeda militants.

The extent of this had surprised even the US military, he said.

'Promises violated'

In an interview with BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, Gen Petraeus said violence in Iraq was being perpetuated by Iran's Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards.

"The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example... were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said, adding that the groups that fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force.

"All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."

The barrage hit the Green Zone on Sunday morning. Some rockets missed their targets killing 15 Iraqi civilians.

Later in the day four US soldiers died when their patrol vehicle was blown up by a bomb in southern Baghdad, putting the total number of US fatalities above 4,000.

This and other bloodshed on Sunday came despite an overall reduction in violence since last June, when the US deployed an extra 30,000 troops for the surge.

Days earlier, Mr Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion, saying that it had made the world a better place.