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January 25th,
2007 - Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq |
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Troops
Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq Administration Strategy Stirs Concern Among Some Officials By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 26, 2007; A01 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." Three officials said that about
150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq at any given time. There is no
evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq,
intelligence officials said. But, for three years, the
Iranians have operated an embedding program there, offering operational
training, intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite militias connected to
the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the violence against Sunni
factions. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the CIA, told the Senate
recently that the amount of Iranian-supplied materiel used against U.S.
troops in Iraq "has been quite striking." "Iran seems to be
conducting a foreign policy with a sense of dangerous triumphalism,"
Hayden said. 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. Tehran insists that its nuclear program is
peaceful, but the United States and other nations say it is aimed at
developing weapons. The administration's plans
contain five "theaters of interest," as one senior official put it,
with military, intelligence, political and diplomatic strategies designed to
target Iranian interests across the Middle East. The White House has
authorized a widening of what is known inside the intelligence community as
the "Blue Game Matrix" - a list of approved operations that can be
carried out against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. And U.S.
officials are preparing international sanctions against Tehran for holding
several dozen al-Qaeda fighters who fled across the Afghan border in late
2001. They plan more aggressive moves to disrupt Tehran's funding of the
radical Palestinian group Hamas and to undermine Iranian interests among
Shiites in western Afghanistan. In Iraq, U.S. troops now
have the authority to target any member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as
well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with
Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats.
Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian
to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military
commanders to exercise the authority. The wide-ranging plan has
several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State
Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could
push the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington into the center of a
chaotic Iraq war. Senior administration
officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down
from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and
elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders. But if
Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to put U.S. citizens and
national interests at greater risk in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Officials said Hayden
counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential
consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to
retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq. Two officials said that
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though a supporter of the strategy, is
concerned about the potential for errors, as well as the ramifications of a
military confrontation between U.S. and Iranian troops on the Iraqi
battlefield. In meetings with Bush's
other senior advisers, officials said, Rice insisted that the defense
secretary appoint a senior official to personally oversee the program to
prevent it from expanding into a full-scale conflict. Rice got the oversight
guarantees she sought, though it remains unclear whether senior Pentagon
officials must approve targets on a case-by-case basis or whether the
oversight is more general. The departments of Defense
and State referred all requests for comment on the Iran strategy to the
National Security Council, which declined to address specific elements of the
plan and would not comment on some intelligence matters. But in response to questions
about the "kill or capture" authorization, Gordon Johndroe,
spokesman for the NSC, said: "The president has made clear for some time
that we will take the steps necessary to protect Americans on the ground in
Iraq and disrupt activity that could lead to their harm. Our forces have
standing authority, consistent with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council." Officials said U.S. and
British special forces in Iraq, which will work together in some operations,
are developing the program's rules of engagement to define the exact
circumstances for using force. In his last few weeks as the top commander in
Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. sought to help coordinate the program on
the ground. One official said Casey had planned to designate Iran's
Revolutionary Guard as a "hostile entity," a distinction within the
military that would permit offensive action. Casey's designated
successor, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, told Congress in writing this
week that a top priority will be "countering the threats posed by
Iranian and Syrian meddling in Iraq, and the continued mission of dismantling
terrorist networks and killing or capturing those who refuse to support a
unified, stable Iraq." Advocates of the new policy
- some of whom are in the NSC, the vice president's office, the Pentagon and
the State Department - said that only direct and aggressive efforts can
shatter Iran's growing influence. A less confident Iran, with fewer cards,
may be more willing to cut the kind of deal the Bush administration is hoping
for on its nuclear program. "The Iranians respond to the international
community only when they are under pressure, not when they are feeling
strong," one official said. With aspects of the plan
also targeting Iran's influence in Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Palestinian
territories, the policy goes beyond the threats Bush issued earlier this
month to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria" into
Iraq. It also marks a departure from years past when diplomacy appeared to be
the sole method of pressuring Iran to reverse course on its nuclear program. R. Nicholas Burns, the
undersecretary of state for political affairs, said in an interview in late
October that the United States knows that Iran "is providing support to
Hezbollah and Hamas and supporting insurgent groups in Iraq that have posed a
problem for our military forces." He added: "In addition to the
nuclear issue, Iran's support for terrorism is high up on our agenda." Burns, the top Foreign
Service officer in the State Department, has been leading diplomatic efforts
to increase international pressure on the Iranians. Over several months, the
administration made available five political appointees for interviews, to
discuss limited aspects of the policy, on the condition that they not be
identified. Officials who spoke in more
detail and without permission - including senior officials, career analysts
and policymakers -- said their standing with the White House would be at risk
if they were quoted by name. The decision to use lethal
force against Iranians inside Iraq began taking shape last summer, when
Israel was at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Officials said a group of senior
Bush administration officials who regularly attend the highest-level
counterterrorism meetings agreed that the conflict provided an opening to
portray Iran as a nuclear-ambitious link between al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the
death squads in Iraq. Among those involved in the
discussions, beginning in August, were deputy national security adviser
Elliott Abrams, NSC counterterrorism adviser Juan Zarate, the head of the
CIA's counterterrorism center, representatives from the Pentagon and the vice
president's office, and outgoing State Department counterterrorism chief
Henry A. Crumpton. At the time, Bush publicly
emphasized diplomacy as his preferred path for dealing with Iran. Standing
before the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 19, Bush spoke directly
to the Iranian people: "We look to the day when you can live in freedom,
and America and Iran can be good friends and close partners in the cause of
peace." Two weeks later, Crumpton
flew from Washington to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa for a
meeting with Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle
East. A principal reason for the visit, according to two officials with
direct knowledge of the discussion, was to press Abizaid to prepare for an
aggressive campaign against Iranian intelligence and military operatives
inside Iraq. Information gleaned through
the "catch and release" policy expanded what was once a limited
intelligence community database on Iranians in Iraq. It also helped to avert
a crisis between the United States and the Iraqi government over whether U.S.
troops should be holding Iranians, several officials said, and dampened the
possibility of Iranians directly targeting U.S. personnel in retaliation. But senior officials saw it
as too timid. "We were making no
traction" with "catch and release," a senior counterterrorism
official said in a recent interview, explaining that it had failed to halt
Iranian activities in Iraq or worry the Tehran leadership. "Our goal is
to change the dynamic with the Iranians, to change the way the Iranians
perceive us and perceive themselves. They need to understand that they cannot
be a party to endangering U.S. soldiers' lives and American interests, as
they have before. That is going to end." A senior intelligence
officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy. "This has little to do
with Iraq. It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It is purely
political," the official said. The official expressed similar views
about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is
escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq
and to blame Iran for the United States' increasing inability to stanch the
violence there. But some officials within
the Bush administration say that targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Command, and specifically a Guard unit known as the Quds Force, should be as
much a priority as fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Quds Force is considered by
Western intelligence to be directed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, to support Iraqi militias, Hamas and Hezbollah. In interviews, two senior
administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the
Nazis and the Guard to the "SS." They also referred to Guard
members as "terrorists." Such a formal designation could turn
Iran's military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror,"
with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA
detention. Asked whether such a
designation is imminent, Johndroe of the NSC said in a written response that
the administration has "long been concerned about the activities of the
IRGC and its components throughout the Middle East and beyond." He
added: "The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force is a part of the
Iranian state apparatus that supports and carries out these activities." Staff writer Barton Gellman
and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012502199.html |