WaPo: U.S. declares war on Iran
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine
Allahpundit
Page A01. I’ll do my best with the blockquote, but you’re crazy if you don’t read the whole thing.
The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort…
The new “kill or capture” program was authorized by President Bush in a meeting of his most senior advisers last fall, along with other measures meant to curtail Iranian influence from Kabul to Beirut and, ultimately, to shake Iran’s commitment to its nuclear efforts…
Getting Serious With Iran In Iraq
Ed Morrissey
The Bush administration has decided to escalate the response to Iranian infiltration in Iraq by ending a "catch and release" program and operating more aggressively against Iranian agents, especially Revolutionary Guard elements. The new rules of engagement include the use of lethal force, and the White House may even consider naming the Iranian Army a terrorist organization for its connections to Hamas and Hezbollah:
The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.
For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.
Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing. The country's nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Tehran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq.
"There were no costs for the Iranians," said one senior administration official. "They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back."
The numbers of Iranians in Iraq, especially in the Shi'ite areas in the south, do not appear to be very large, according to the Washington Post, but they are significant. Estimates put the number of intelligence agents at 150, a hefty commitment for Teheran. No estimates exist for the number of Revolutionary Guard soldiers, but their existence in Iraq at all would constitute an act of war on its own, both against Iraq and against the Coalition nations operating under the UN mandate.
That realization has given the impetus to the more aggressive strategy. ...
