Archive for the 'Iran' Category

In Critical Errors in Assessing Iran as we have done previously, we pointed out that Iran is currently engaging in covert war with the U.S., both inside and outside the borders of Iraq.  The U.S. intelligence community has had difficulty with this idea, questioning on the one hand whether the so-called “highest levels” of Iranian power knew and approved of the activities of al Quds, and on the other hand even taking the view early on that Iran actually sought and desired a stable and secure Iraq.

At a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence … the outgoing director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, said the old view was that Iran does not want a civil war in Iraq. But he said this assessment was changing.

“One has to wonder why it is that they have increased their supply of these kinds of lethal weapons to extremist Shia groups in Iraq, provoking violence, attacks on coalition forces, and others. And one wonders if their policy towards Iraq may not have shifted to a more aggressive posture than it has been in the past,” he said.

Concerning the most recent meeting in Baghdad, it is not clear what if anything would be accomplished, because the U.S. has met discretely with Iran for years.  In Intelligence Bulletin #1 we discussed the Iranian al Quds forces, and later in The Covert War with Iran we detailed some of the Iranian activities inside Iraq.  Yet there is even more current evidence against Iran concerning weapons in the southern portion of Iraq, and specifically Basra.  Data on Iranian involvement in Basra attacks against British forces has been compiled.

The Sun, 5 March – British troops in Iraq are being bombarded by new rockets and mortars supplied by Iran.

The missiles have caused 30 casualties so far at one large base in Basra alone.

The Sun has seen remnants and duds from the giant cache that prove they could NOT have been made in Iraq.

They are freshly painted, dated “2006

There are insurgencies and counterinsurgencies taking place throughout the region of the Middle East, focusing first on Iraq.  In “The Surge” and Coming Operations in Iraq, we discussed no less than eight significant wars occurring in and near Iraq, involving the Shi’a Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Kurds, foreign fighters flowing in from Syria, AQI and AAS, suicide bombers or jihadists, Iran, Syria, and finally internecine warfare among the Anbar tribes.

Not only are Syria and Iran meddling in Iraq, but it has become clear that Jordan and especially Saudi Arabia are as well, and this has directly involved U.S. deaths.

What the American authorities are reluctant to admit, however, is that there are signs that the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and their allies – including Jordan – have been equipping and training Sunni extremists in Iraq for some time now. Critically, not all the weaponry and munitions have been used against the militants’ Shia and Kurdish Iraqi enemies. Some of them – including lethal roadside bombs – have been aimed at US forces.  “The growth of the official and unofficial Saudi and Jordanian support for the militants is one of the most worrying developments,” a senior British officer said privately after a visit to Iraq.

Conventional combat operations also have the potential to increase dramatically in the coming months.  In Intelligence Bulletin #1, we observed:

Israel has asked the U.S. for permission to use Iraqi air space in an over-flight to target Iranian nuclear facilities.  Note well that Israel requested permission from the U.S., not Iraq.  The U.S. is under what the U.N. security council calls a ‘security partnership‘ with Iraq.  Sovereignty over the air space is questionable at this point if we have regard for the U.N. resolution (a position which I am not advocating).  But Israel, assuming that the U.S. will grant the permission, is on the clock.  They know that the troops will be coming home, and then there is no appeal.  The Iraqi government will not grant access to attack Iran.  In fact, they will warn Iran of the impending strike.  The current administration is in power for two more years, and Israel will not wait until after they leave office.  Olmert has likened Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon to a second holocaust, and he is relatively dovish compared to his possible successor Netanyahu.

We continue to believe that this position has merit, and we will stand by our prediction.  While time may be ebbing away for the erstwhile Prime Minister Netanyahu ever to be such again, it doesn’t matter.  Even the dovish Olmert understands the stakes, and Israel will not, in our opinion, let the matter of a nuclear Iran slip into the next U.S. administration.  Israel may not have an ally in the next U.S. administration, and that may spell doom for Israel should she tarry.  The world has a window of opportunity of less than two years to avert catastrophy, with the powderkeg of the Middle East exploding with ramifications into the rest of the world.  An air war may be avoidable, and Netanyahu made an apperance on FNC to plead for economic boycotts of Iran by the world markets.  We agree with Netanyahu, though, when he said “if your enemy is implacable and in possession of mad ideologies, whether you talk to him is a secondary issue.  The first issue is how much pressure you bring to bear.”

True to this counsel, the intelligence wars are heating up in the Middle East, with Iraq directly in the middle of the Middle East.  In Important Undercurrents in Iraq, we cited the explosive DEBKAfile report which exposed the disappearance of high ranking Iranian Defense Minister until 2005, with the report strongly hinting that the DEBKAfile believes that he was kidnapped:

Iran’s dep. defense minister for eight years up until 2005 – and before that a prominent Revolutionary Guards General, Alireza Asquari, 63, has not been seen since his disappearance in mysterious circumstances in Istanbul on Feb. 7.

The missing general has been identified as the officer in charge of Iranian undercover operations in central Iraq, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Iranian sources. He is believed to have been linked to – or participated in – the armed group which stormed the US-Iraqi command center in Karbala south of Baghdad Jan. 20 and snatched five American officers. They were shot outside the Shiite city.

An Middle East intelligence source told DEBKAfile that the Americans could not let this premeditated outrage go unanswered and had been hunting the Iranian general ever since.

The BAZTAB Web site reported that Feb. 6, two non-Turkish citizens made a reservation for Gen Asquari for three nights at the Istanbul Ceylan Hotel paying cash. He arrived the next day from Damascus and immediately disappeared.

Other reports were soon issued that hinted to the contrary, saying that a defection was possible, and pointing to cracks in an Iranian intelligence network in such a condition that would allow something like this to happen without their knowledge.  In fact, it has been suggested that Israel is responsible for the defection of the Iranian general, and this has caused Israel to go on worldwide alert for all of their foreign installations in preparation for possible retribution by Iran.  The Washington Post has directly reported that the Iranian general defected, pointing to an intelligence coup resulting from the information he has divulged.

So the Sunni fight the Sunni in Anbar depending upon which tribe they are in, the Shi’a fight the Sunni and vice versa, the Kurds fight the Iranians and Turks, the Iranians, Syrians and Saudis foment violence in Iraq, AQI and AAS snipe from behind women and children, and jihadist suicide bombers blow up people in the marketplace, while al Quds, CIA, Israeli and other international intelligence forces from around the world battle it out on Iraqi soil and nearby, and all the while Israel studies how to bomb Iranian nuclear sites fearing for her very survival.

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The Arab League has called on the United Nations Security Council to set a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq.  Continuing with the demands, in a request that might be humorous if it weren’t so sad, “the list also includes a call for the fair distribution of wealth and the disbanding of all militias.”

The fair distribution of wealth is certainly a laudable goal, and one that might help in bringing some stability to the government.  It is the next demand that catches the eye: “disbanding all militias” – as if the U.N. was capable of causing such a thing to happen.  As we have noted before, Coalition Forces (primarily U.S.) are finally targeting Sadr City in the security sweeps, but still mainly engaging the so-called death squads and assumed rogue elements of the Madhi army.  But by attacking the “rogue” elements, the U.S. may be tacitly admitting defeat before the surge becomes fully engaged.

The Iraqi security forces and police are heavily infiltrated with Sadrist elements, and there is no question at the moment who controls Baghdad.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city’s population and the front line of al-Sadr’s campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr’s militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they’ve trained and armed.

“Half of them are JAM. They’ll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night,” said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia’s Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. “People (in America) think it’s bad, but that we control the city. That’s not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It’s hostile territory” …

“All the Shiites have to do is tell everyone to lay low, wait for the Americans to leave, then when they leave you have a target list and within a day they’ll kill every Sunni leader in the country. It’ll be called the `Day of Death’ or something like that,” said 1st Lt. Alain Etienne, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y. “They say, `Wait, and we will be victorious.’ That’s what they preach. And it will be their victory.”

“Honestly, within six months of us leaving, the way Iranian clerics run the country behind the scenes, it’ll be the same way here with Sadr,” said Quinn, 25, of Cleveland. “He already runs our side of the river.”

We have previously noted the necessity to defang the Mahdi army and kill or capture Moqtada al Sadr, or at least, prevent his return to Iraq.  The strengthening of the radical Shi’ites and Iran is not at all a trivial concern, and the connection between the Mahdi army and Iran is not accidental any more than Sadr’s presence in Iran during the “surge” is accidental.  Iran is still training the Mahdi army, with some recent “deployments” of the Mahdi army directly from Iranian training camps.

500 members of the Mahdi Army have allegedly returned to Iraq during the last two days after receiving training in neighboring Iran, the Haqq Agency reports. Unnamed sources told the agency that several hundred Mahdi Army militiamen have been training in Iranian camps in areas bordering the Maysan Governorate, south of Iraq, for the last three months.

We have discussed the need to view OIF as a regional conflict, along with recommending full engagement in the covert war with Iran.  There seems to be significant action on this front.

Iran’s dep. defense minister for eight years up until 2005 – and before that a prominent Revolutionary Guards General, Alireza Asquari, 63, has not been seen since his disappearance in mysterious circumstances in Istanbul on Feb. 7.

The missing general has been identified as the officer in charge of Iranian undercover operations in central Iraq, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Iranian sources. He is believed to have been linked to – or participated in – the armed group which stormed the US-Iraqi command center in Karbala south of Baghdad Jan. 20 and snatched five American officers. They were shot outside the Shiite city.

An Middle East intelligence source told DEBKAfile that the Americans could not let this premeditated outrage go unanswered and had been hunting the Iranian general ever since.

The BAZTAB Web site reported that Feb. 6, two non-Turkish citizens made a reservation for Gen Asquari for three nights at the Istanbul Ceylan Hotel paying cash. He arrived the next day from Damascus and immediately disappeared.

The Turkish foreign ministry said only: “It is a very sensitive intelligence matter and the Interior Ministry is dealing with this issue.

The Intelligence Bulletin is an aggregation and commentary series, and this is the second entry in that series.

Intelligence Bulletin #2 covers the following subjects: [1] victories and violence in Sunni areas, [2] Baghdad security operations: promise and problems, [3] Iraq awash in munitions, [4] distributed operations and snipers on the roof tops, [5] HUMINT and information warfare in Iraq, [6] update on Austrian sniper rifles in Iraq, [7] U.S. military preparedness degraded (special ops to grow?), [8] hard times at Walter Reed and the VA, [9] U.S. funding Iranian insurgency, and [10] update on international legal war against the CIA.

Victories and Violence in Sunni Areas

There is indication that AQI — and those who have chosen to align with them — may be wearing out their welcome in Iraq.  On Wednesday there was significant combat action near Fallujah, and the remarkable thing about this action was that it didn’t involve U.S. forces.

Iraqi security forces killed dozens of al Qaeda militants who attacked a village in western Anbar province on Wednesday, during fierce clashes that lasted much of the day, police officials said on Thursday …

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf said foreign Arabs and Afghans were among some 80 militants killed and 50 captured in the clashes in Amiriyat al Falluja, an Anbar village where local tribes had opposed al Qaeda.

A police official in the area, Ahmed al-Falluji, put the number of militants killed at 70, with three police officers killed. There was no immediate verification of the numbers.

A U.S. military spokesman in the nearby city of Falluja, Major Jeff Pool, said U.S. forces were not involved in the battle but had received reports from Iraqi police that it lasted most of Wednesday. He could not confirm the number killed.

Another police source in Falluja put the figure at dozens.

“Because it was so many killed we can’t give an exact number for the death toll,” the police source told Reuters.

Witnesses said dozens of al Qaeda members attacked the village, prompting residents to flee and seek help from Iraqi security forces, who sent in police and soldiers.

Stars and Stripes gives us a similar recent report on population involvement in defeating the insurgency in the Sunni town of Hawijah.  It is so significant that large portions are reproduced below.

… even for a city with a “roughneck

There is a growing chorus of voices urging talks with Iran to stop interference in Iraq and the rush to the status of world nuclear power, and the U.S. has recently agreed to high level talks with Syria and Iran concerning the future of Iraq.  When assessing these things, there is a real danger in framing the problem within the context of our own worldview — where the boundary conditions for our conclusions (incorrectly) become our own cultural, historical and religious heritage.  This is a critical error in judgment, and as one means of avoiding it, there is utility in listening to the enemy.

In the Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2007, Volume XIV, Number 1, Ali Alfoneh has written an excellent assessment of the meteoric rise to prominence of the Doctrinal Analysis Center for Security without Borders (Markaz-e barresiha-ye doktrinyal-e amniyat bedun marz), an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps think tank that has been instrumental in promulgating the formation of suicide brigades in Iran.

Its director, Hassan Abbasi, has embraced the utility of suicide terrorism … He announced that approximately 40,000 Iranian estesh-hadiyun (martyrdom-seekers) were ready to carry out suicide operations against “twenty-nine identified Western targets” should the U.S. military strike Iranian nuclear installations.

Such threats are not new. According to an interview with Iran’s Fars News Agency released on Abbasi’s weblog, he has propagated haras-e moghaddas (sacred terror) at least since 2004. “The front of unbelief,” Abbasi wrote, “is the front of the enemies of God and Muslims. Any deed which might instigate terror and horror among them is sacred and honorable.”  On June 5, 2004, he spoke of how suicide operations could overcome superior military force: “In ‘deo-centric’ thought, there is no need for military parity to face the enemy … Deo-centric man prepares himself for martyrdom while humanist man struggles to kill.”

Alfoneh continues by pointing to the formalization of these ideas within the context of the Iranian intelligence forces and using religion as the backdrop.

The organization’s prominence continued to grow throughout the year. On June 5, 2004, the reformist daily Shargh granted Mohammad-Ali Samadi, Headquarters’ spokesman, a front page interview.  Samadi has a pedigree of hard-line revolutionary credentials. He is a member of the editorial boards of Shalamche and Bahar magazines, affiliated with the hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah (Followers of the Party of God) vigilante group, as well as the newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami, considered the voice of the intelligence ministry.  Samadi said he had registered 2,000 volunteers for suicide operations at a seminar the previous day.  Copies of the registration forms  show that the “martyrdom-seekers” could volunteer for suicide operations against three targets: operations against U.S. forces in the Shi‘ite holy cities in Iraq; against Israelis in Jerusalem; and against Rushdie. The registration forms also quote Khomeini’s declaration that “if the enemy assaults the lands of the Muslims and its frontiers, it is mandatory for all Muslims to defend it by all means possible [be it by] offering life or property,” and current supreme leader Ali Khamene’i’s remarks that “[m]artyrdom-seeking operations mark the highest point of the greatness of a nation and the peak of [its] epic. A man, a youth, a boy, and a girl who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the interests of the nation and their religion is the [symbol of the] greatest pride, courage, and bravery.”  According to press reports, a number of senior regime officials have attended the Headquarters’ seminars.  The Iranian officials appeared true to their word. During a September 2004 speech in Bushehr, home of Iran’s declared nuclear reactor, Samadi announced the formation of a “martyrdom-seeking” unit from Bushehr while Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the official daily Keyhan, called the United States military “our hostage in Iraq,” and bragged that “martyrdom-operations constitute a tactical capability in the world of Islam.”

In The Covert War with Iran we briefly detailed some of the Iranian activities inside Iraq.  In Intelligence Bulletin #1 we discussed the Quds Forces regarding the obvious equivocation of the U.S. intelligence community in assigning responsibility for their actions to Iran’s leaders.  But regardless of the loosely coupled nodal power structure in Iran, the Mullahs are at the top of the organization chart.  The evidence for al Quds activity continues to accumulate, most recently with the arrest of a Pasdaran commander inside Iraq.  Giving us some of the more statistical and useful data, Strategy Page has a recent commentary on Quds, assigning them the role of special forces of Iran.

Iran has its own Special Forces, the secretive al Quds Force, which belongs to the IRGC (the Iranian Republican Guard Corps.) Also known as the Pasdaran, the IRGC is a paramilitary force of about 100,000 full timers that insures (sic) that any anti-government activity is quickly eliminated. To assist the Pasdaran, there is a part-time, volunteer force, several hundred thousand Basej, which can provide additional manpower when street muscle is required. The Basej are usually young, Islamic conservative men, who are not afraid to get their hands dirty. If opponents to the government stage a large demonstration, it will often be broken up by Basej, in civilian clubs, using fists and clubs.

The Quds Force is a full time operation, of men trained to spread the Islamic revolution outside Iran. The Quds force has a major problem in that they are spreading a Shia Islamic revolution, while only 15 percent of Moslems are Shia. Most of the rest are Sunni, and many of those consider Shia heretics. In several countries, there is constant violence between Shia and Sunni conservatives. This has been going on long before the clerics took control of Iran in 1979 ( al Qaeda showed up in the 1990s).

The core operatives of the Quds force comprises only a few thousand people. But many of them are highly educated, most speak foreign languages, and all are Islamic radicals. They are on a mission from God to convert the world to Shia Islam, and the rule of Shia clergy. The Quds Force has been around since the 1980s, and their biggest success has been in Lebanon, where they helped local Shia (who comprise about a third of the population) form the Hizbollah organization.

The control that the Mullahs exhibit over Iran is firm and fixed, and international conversation has been a strategic tool used by the religious rulers for thirty years.  The appearance of vacillation and irresolution has been used as tactical leverage as part of this international conversation, and this behavior should not be seen as an actual willingness to forego a nuclear weapons program or relinquish their aims of regional domination.  Their ally, Moqtada al Sadr, is an analogous example of this tactic.  In Just How Long is Haifa Street?, we pressed the question of al Sadr, asking if the Baghdad security plan went directly to the doorsteps of Sadr’s house?  Al Sadr is currently believed to be in Iran, and the security crackdown in Baghdad is targeting rogue elements of the Mahdi army (the so-called death squads, although it should also be noted that the protracted period of time between the announcement of the crackdown and the implementation of it has reportedly allowed many members of the death squads to escape or melt away into the population).

Speculation on inside jobs and so-called house cleaning of insubordinate elements of the Mahdi army should not cause a loss of focus regarding the questions ‘who is al Sadr? and ‘what are his aims?’  Al Sadr has come out strongly against the Baghdad security plan, admonishing his followers to distance themselves from it, and saying that since it is being implemented by “occupying enemies” it is doomed to fail.  Not allowing the opportunity to escape, al Sadr’s aid recently opined that poor Sadr was misunderstood, and didn’t really mean what he seemed to say.

Since Iran is actively spreading terror across the globe, their special forces should be and are capable of functioning not just as military or paramilitary fighters, but as terrorists.  The New York Police Department has been concerned for several years about the possibility of Iranian terrorism within their city.

NYPD officials have worried about possible Iranian-sponsored attacks since a series of incidents involving officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. In November 2003, Ahmad Safari and Alireaza Safi, described as Iranian Mission “security” personnel, were detained by transit cops when they were seen videotaping subway tracks from Queens to Manhattan at 1:10 in the morning. The men later left New York. “We’re concerned that Iranian agents were engaged in reconnaissance that might be used in an attack against New York City at some future date,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told NEWSWEEK.

As we discussed before concerning negotiations with enemies, we are not opposed to talking about Iraq with other countries, even Syria or Iran.  But the proper thought-framework must bound the discussions and expectations.  Romantic notions of international behavior changes that will make the radical clerics willing to change their vision don’t account for the fundamental religious differences that divide Iran with the rest of the world.  Expectations of dismantling the suicide and terror brigades don’t account for how deeply embedded the cult of death is in this radical thinking.

Conversely, Wes Clark’s approach, posing the question “cannot the world’s most powerful nation deign speak to the resentful and scheming regional power that is Iran?,” is to trifle with a dangerous movement, this movement being sponsored and promulgaged by a dangerous and powerful country.  Neither romantic notions of friendship nor insulting trivialization is helpful.

Talk if we must, be remember that talk is precisely what the Iranians want.  While many in the U.S. believe it to be the solution, Iran trusts in this and uses it as a strategic tool of their vision.  In the end, the real question will not be whether war with Iran is inevitable.  Rather, it will be how we engage the Iranians.  They are already at war with us.

Intelligence bulletin #1 covers the following subjects: [1] Iran’s Quds forces, [2] international war against the CIA, [3] recent combat action in Ramadi, [4] State Department unauthorized absence in the global war on terror, [5] British pullback from Iraq and the Mahdi army, [6] Iranian activities inside Iraq and Israeli concerns, [7] the M-16, [8] speculation on thermobaric weapons inside Iraq, [9] the wounded, and [10] A-10 flyover video.

Iran’s Quds forces

The Quds Force is an arm of the IRGC that carries out operations outside of Iran.  The AP recently reported on Iran’s highly secretive Quds forces being deeply enmeshed within Iraq:

Iran’s secretive Quds Force, accused by the United States of arming Iraqi militants with deadly bomb-making material, has built up an extensive network in the war-torn country, recruiting Iraqis and supporting not only Shiite militias but also Shiites allied with Washington, experts say.

Iran likely does not want a direct confrontation with American troops in Iraq but is backing militiamen to ensure Shiites win any future civil war with Iraqi Sunnis after the Americans leave, several experts said Thursday.

The Quds Force’s role underlines how deeply enmeshed Iran is in its neighbor — and how the U.S. could face resistance even from its allies in Iraq if it tries to uproot Iran’s influence in Iraq.

But as quickly as the connection between the Shi’ite insurgency and Iran is pointed out, the report equivocates, saying “still unclear, however, is how closely Iran’s top leadership is directing the Quds Force’s operations — and whether Iran has intended for its help to Shiite militias to be turned against U.S. forces.”  This line is parroted in a recent Los Angeles Times article on the same subject, as the subtitle reads “Does the government control the Quds Force? Experts aren’t sure.”  Picking up on the same AP report, Newsday says the same thing.

As I discussed in The Covert War with Iran, the deep involvement of the Quds Forces, Badr Brigade and other Iranian personnel assets in Iraq is undeniable.  But it is fashionable to bifurcate the actions of the Quds and Badr Brigade from the “highest levels of government in Iran.”  Even General Peter Pace does this, recently saying after reviewing the intelligence on Iran’s involvement in Iraq, “that does not translate that the Iranian Government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this…What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.

Counterinsurgency in Iraq is proving to be difficult, and not amenable to the classical understanding of how it is supposed to be conducted.  The potable water supply in the al Anbar Province is described as a desperate situation, and aid workers and other government representatives cannot access the region to repair the systems or bring in potable water due to security concerns.  Umm Muhammad Jalal, 39, starts every day walking to a river 7km away from her temporary home in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Fallujah, 70km west of the capital, Baghdad. Because of severe water shortages, she and many others make the daily trip to the river to collect water for all their needs.  “For the past four months we have been forced to drink, wash and clean with the river water. There is a dire shortage of potable water in Fallujah and nearby cities,” Umm Muhammad said.  “My children are sick with diarrhoea but I have no option. They cannot live without water,” she added. “Aid agencies that were helping us with their trucks of potable water are less and less frequent these days for security reasons. For the same reason, the military doesn’t want the [aid] convoys to get too close to some areas.”

Meanwhile, the Marines in Anbar are occupied with mundane duties.  Many will not fire a shot from their firearm the entire deployment.  “In farming communities along the Syrian border, U.S. Marines work with Iraqis to open health clinics and a job center and to improve trash collection and water delivery.  In Fallouja, Marines at a center for displaced people greet Sunni Muslims from Baghdad seeking sanctuary from Shiite Muslim death squads.  And along the sniper alley of a freeway that runs between Fallouja and Ramadi, Marines patrol less like warriors than traffic cops.  Rather than charge into battle, most Marines in Iraq’s western desert are engaged in nation building on a piecemeal basis.”

It is interesting that the road from Fallujah to Ramadi is even now, more than four years into the counterinsurgency campaign, described as “sniper alley.”  This is eerily reminiscent of the picture so aptly painted by National Geographic Explorer’s exposé entitled “Iraq’s Guns for Hire.”   The planning for one British security contractor night time operation, i.e., the delivery of supplies, involved a description of sniper fire along roads from Baghdad to other parts of Iraq.  The sniper firing locations were so well-known that the planning for the mission included consideration for continual movement of the convoy at the right places and the related appropriate instructions to the recently hired Iraqi drivers. The gauntlet was described as a sophisticated system of interlocking and opposing fields of fire that covered several kilometers, and just as expected, the convoy was struck with sniper fire.

In previous sniper and countersniper coverage, I have noted that although there are two primary enemy tactics of U.S. casualties in Iraq, IEDs and snipers, the doctrinal underpinnings of a strategy to counter this threat have been mostly absent.  I have also covered body armor in the context of snipers, but this is primarily a defensive answer to the threat.  Tactical solutions such as satellite patrols (the details of which will not be described here for obvious reasons) can only have some finite effectiveness, and so more is needed to address the threat.

Beyond body armor and satellite patrols, the serious thinker must ponder the question, “how can the precise locations of enemy snipers be so well-known that mission planning accounts for this threat, yet we still have soldiers and marines deployed to relatively safe FOBs without offensively engaging the enemy snipers?”  I have previously suggested unleashing American snipers from the restrictions that they have been under, but this requires re-thinking cherished features of military life like chain of command.  Finally, one is forced to wonder about the risk aversion that would leave enemy snipers on the main arteries to wreak havoc in the night hours, while the U.S. troops are said to “own the night.”

The fluidity of enemy movement is still problematic, probably for reasons that include informing the enemy of strategic and tactical intentions in advance of their implementation.  As previously discussed, it is confirmed by more recent reports that enemy forces are streaming north into the Diyala Province.  Iraqi insurgents have been streaming out of Baghdad to escape the security crackdown, carrying the fight to neighbouring Diyala province where direct attacks on Americans have nearly doubled since last summer, U.S. soldiers said.  That has led to sharp fighting only 55 kilometres north of the capital in a province known as “Little Iraq

Pat Dollard gives us an interesting rundown of what he calls the 11-point plan for victory in Iraq submitted to the White House, Pentagon and State Department (which he claims has been confirmed by sources both inside and outside the military).  I highly recommend that you spend some time reading the full eleven points, but I want to call out three specific points and comment on them.

1. U.S. troops are to be gradually pulled back from all Iraqi cities and towns and sent to seal the borders with Iran and Syria. The real insurgency is not indigenous to Iraq, but being pumped in through Iran and Syria.

2. Ramadi and Baghdad will be two of a handful of initial principle exceptions, as major U.S supported military engagements are in process in Baghadad (sic) and gearing up in Ramadi.

6. A massive assault is shortly due to be launched on Ramadi, the capital of Al Qaeda, and the remnants of the Sunni Insurgency, in Iraq. Ramadi has degenerated to a sort of post-modern trench warfare, Marines and Soldiers locked away in a variety of new urban outposts, while all the schools have finally been closed and it is nigh on impossible for the average citizen to conduct his daily life. The deadlock must be broken, and Al Qaeda must finally be ejected.

Beginning first with point number six, in my article Watching Anbar, I said:

I have been watching the al Anbar Province for most of the Iraq war, and I beg to differ with the U.S. generals.  I believe that however Anbar goes, so goes the war.  The key to Iraq is the Anbar Province.  While Anbar remains unpacified, insurgent groups (al Qaeda in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunna, etc.) can continue to split the tribal loyalties in the region with some tribes siding with the insurgents and others siding with the government in Baghdad.  This is done not only by propaganda, but by intimidation of the tribal leaders and violence perpetrated on their people.

This is a clever way to effect force multiplication.  The insurgents not only have their own military and personnel assets with which to conduct guerrilla operations, they coax and cajole others to join them in the fight.  This way, tribes fight tribes in internecine war throughout the Anbar Province, ensuring that the insurgents are free to continue their guerrilla operations against coalition forces.  This tactic was successfully used by the Viet Cong in the war in Vietnam.

Being freed to continue guerrilla operations, in addition to attacks against coalition forces, the insurgents can conduct death raids against Shi’ite elements, ensuring a response by Shia militia, which ensures a counter-response by more insurgents (including some tribal elements), and so the cycle goes.

Really, this description is somewhat incomplete, and in recent article The Covert War with Iran, I filled in the blanks.  Not only is AQI and AAS fomenting a sectarian war by attacking the Shi’a, but Iranian intelligence assets are doing so as well by directing death squads to do the same to the Sunni.  Ramadi is home to all manner of rougue elements, and must be pacified for OIF to succeed.  It is one side of the fulcrum, the other being Baghdad.

While much was made of the tribes taking up the war against AQI and AAS, I was skeptical, calling the tribes “recruits” and saying that if they end up being useful, it will be only after a protracted time.  Dollard echoes this concern in point number seven of the plan, saying “We will be “firing

Syria and Iran could not tolerate an American success in Iraq, because it would fatally undermine the authority of the tyrants in Damascus and Tehran. Since the United States has taken too long to move on from Afghanistan to challenge the regimes of the terror masters, they had forged an alliance and would co-operate in sending terror squads against coalition armed forces, with the intention of repeating the Lebanese scenarios in the mid-Eighties (against the United States) and the late Nineties (against Israel) — Michael Ledeen, before the invasion of Iraq.

Michael Ledeen has given us compelling argument to see the war in the Middle East as running through Syria directly to Iran.  The war.  The Isreal-Hezballah war, and OIF …  the war.  It is all the same war, argues Ledeen.  Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming.  It has been well known for some time that Iran has provided training, funding, weapons and equipment for terrorists inside Iraq.

Iranians have been caught destroying oil pipelines in Iraq under orders from Iranian intelligence.  IED technology has been developed in Iran, tested by Hezballah in the recent war with Israel, and shipped to Iraq, this IED technology having an unmistakable Iranian signature.  In response to “the surge,” dozens of Iranian Intelligence officers were taking positions around Baghdad, in Salman Pak, Hilla and Kut, in preparation for an attack to drive out the remaining Sunni population from districts on the Rusafa side, east of Baghdad, in order to assume full control by Shi’ite political parties loyal to Iran.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, an accomplished terrorist, serves as an Iranian agent in the Iraqi Parliament.  Moqtada al Sadr is apparently not the Iraqi patriot he has been made out to be, as it appears now that not only was he smuggled off to Iran, but the high level leaders of the Mahdi army were as well (see also here).  It is old and tired, this argument on the question whether the insurgents are domestic or foreigners.  Iran and Syria are behind much of the trouble in Iraq.  The Iranian investment of human resources inside Iraq and as a safe haven for the Sadrists, Badr Brigade and other terrorists is as unmistakable as it is remarkable.  Recently seized Iranian intelligence documents detail the mayhem Iran has planned and executed inside Iraq.

The activity of Iranian intelligence and the Quds forces and the flight of the Mahdi army leadership to Iran are not reflexive.  It must be seen within the context of the broader war with Iran.  Perhaps four years too late with this assessment, the January 16, 2007 Strategic Forecasting Geopolitical Intelligence Report by George Friedman flatly states:

The Iraq war has turned into a duel between the United States and Iran. For the United States, the goal has been the creation of a generally pro-American coalition government in Baghdad — representing Iraq’s three major ethnic communities. For Iran, the goal has been the creation of either a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad or, alternatively, the division of Iraq into three regions, with Iran dominating the Shiite south.

The United States has encountered serious problems in creating the coalition government. The Iranians have been primarily responsible for that. With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June, when it appeared that the Sunnis would enter the political process fully, the Iranians used their influence with various Iraqi Shiite factions to disrupt that process by launching attacks on Sunnis and generally destabilizing the situation. Certainly, [the] Sunnis contributed to this, but for much of the past year, it has been the Shia, supported by Iran, that have been the primary destabilizing force.

So long as the Iranians continue to follow this policy, the U.S. strategy cannot succeed. The difficulty of the American plan is that it requires the political participation of three main ethnic groups that are themselves politically fragmented. Virtually any substantial group can block the success of the strategy by undermining the political process. The Iranians, however, appear to be in a more powerful position than the Americans. So long as they continue to support Shiite groups within Iraq, they will be able to block the U.S. plan.

The Iranian activity has not been limited to providing ordnance, weapons, cash, moral support, training and direct military engagement.  The February 14, 2007, the Strategic Forecasting Terrorism Intelligence Report by Fred Burton describes the ongoing covert war with Iran.

Clearly, there is a lot of rhetoric flying around. But despite the threats and bluster, it is not at all clear that the United States has either the capacity or the will to launch an actual attack against Iran — nor is it clear that Israel has the ability to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure on its own. For its part, Iran — in spite of its recent weapons purchases and highly publicized missile tests — clearly is in no position to go toe-to-toe with the U.S. military.

With neither side willing or able to confront the other in the conventional military sense, both will be looking for alternative means of achieving its goals. For any nation-state, its intelligence services are an important weapon in the arsenal — and it now appears that a covert intelligence war between the United States and Iran, first raised by Stratfor as a possibility in March 2006 , is well under way. So far, the action in this intelligence war has been confined mainly to Iraq and Lebanon. However, recent events — including the mysterious death in January of a top Iranian nuclear scientist, who was believed to have been a target of Mossad — indicate that this quiet war is escalating, and soon could move to fronts beyond the Middle East …

Because Iran’s conventional military forces — though among the best in the region — are clearly no match for those of the Americans or others, the sophisticated and highly disciplined intelligence service, and its ability to carry out covert campaigns, is a key component of national security. In the past, kidnappings and assassinations — carried out with sufficient deniability — have proved an effective way of eliminating enemies and leveraging the country’s geopolitical position without incurring unacceptable risk.

But Strategic Forecasting stops short in either of the two analyses cited above of recommending a compelling strategy for addressing the Syrian and Iranian threat inside Iraq, even though they have said that the success of OIF depends upon such a strategy.

In The Iran War Plans, I provided a fairly pedestrian analysis in which I suggested that a land invasion of Iran would be costly and fraught with problems.  Moreover, I pointed out that if the goal of such military action is to destroy the Iranian nuclear enrichment program, the transport aircraft to deploy Soldiers and Marines to the sites are too slow, cannot carry the requisite fuel to get to some of the nuclear sites based on calculations I performed (and relying upon aircraft specifications in the public domain), and cannot move enough troops to accomplish the mission.  Destruction of the enrichment sites will require heavy involvement of U.S. air power, probably to the exclusion of everything else.

Thus the boundary conditions are as follows.  The human costs of a land invasion would be high.  Iran is at war with both Iraq and the United States, involving covert and intelligence operations and other military and additional assistance.  The Iranian strategy is succeeding.  Assuming the accuracy of the Strafor assessment – “So long as the Iranians continue to follow this policy, the U.S. strategy cannot succeed

The Small Wars Journal has a fascinating discussion thread that begins with a Washington Post article by reporter Thomas Ricks, entitled “Officers with PhDs Advising War Effort.”  Says Ricks:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals — including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders — in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.

Army officers tend to refer to the group as “Petraeus guys.” They are smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: military officers with doctorates from top-flight universities and combat experience in Iraq.

Essentially, the Army is turning the war over to its dissidents, who have criticized the way the service has operated there the past three years, and is letting them try to wage the war their way.

“Their role is crucial if we are to reverse the effects of four years of conventional mind-set fighting an unconventional war,” said a Special Forces colonel who knows some of the officers.

But there is widespread skepticism that even this unusual group, with its specialized knowledge of counterinsurgency methods, will be able to win the battle of Baghdad.

“Petraeus’s ‘brain trust’ is an impressive bunch, but I think it’s too late to salvage success in Iraq,” said a professor at a military war college, who said he thinks that the general will still not have sufficient troops to implement a genuine counterinsurgency strategy and that the United States really has no solution for the sectarian violence tearing apart Iraq.

The related conversation in the discussion thread at the Small Wars Journal ranges from doctrinal observations on counterinsurgency strategy to personal reflections on the public’s view of the military concerning whether there is sufficient brain power in the conventional military to develop a strategy to pull off a victory in Iraq.

I do not find it at all odd that ‘warrior-philosophers’ or ‘warrior-scholars’ would be involved in the development of strategy, while at the same time I see no compelling argument to suggest that they are situated any better than their predecessors or the balance of the military to develop the going-forward doctrine for OIF.

While a wildly unpopular view, I have been critical of the recently released counterinsurgency manual on which General Petraeus spent much of the previous couple of years developing.  In War, Counterinsurgency and Prolonged Operations, I contrasted FM 3-24 with both Sun Tzu (The Art of War) and the Small Wars Manual, regarding the understanding of both of the later of the effect of prolonged operations on the morale of the warrior, and the reticence of the former on the same subject.  In Snipers Having Tragic Success Against U.S. Troops (still a well-visited post), I made the observation that while snipers were one of two main prongs of insurgent success in Iraq (IEDs being the other), FM 3-24 did not contain one instance of the use of the word sniper.  The retort is granted that FM 3-24 addresses counterinsurgency on a doctrinal level rather than a tactical level, but the objection loses its punch considering that (a) the Small Wars Manual addresses tactical level concerns, and (b) the fighting men from the ‘strategic corporal‘ to the field grade officer work with tactical level concerns on a daily basis.  If FM 3-24 does not address tactical level issues, one must question its usefulness.

I have also questioned the Petraeus model for Mosul, stating that at all times and in all circumstances, security trumps nonkinetic operations, politics and reconstruction.  The question “what have you done to win Iraqi hearts and minds today,