First, the story, then some background.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-12/16/c_13650701.htmIran accuses US, Britain, Israel of deadly suicide bomb attack
English.news.cn 2010-12-16 02:21:52
TEHRAN, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Wednesday accused the United States, Britain and Israel of involving in the deadly suicide bomb attack in the country which left 39 killed and more than 50 others wounded. The attack occurred in front of the Imam Hussein mosque in southeastern port city of Chabahar on Wednesday when people gathered for a mourning ceremony on the religious occasion of Tasua, local satellite Press TV said.
Tasua is commemorated by Shiite Muslims, marking the eve of the day when Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, was killed. According to media, the Pakistan-based Sunni rebel group Jundallah (God' s soldiers) has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.
Chief of Iran's Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi accused the United States and Britain of involving in the attack, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. "The experience from the past incidents indicate that the U.S. and U.K. intelligent services are behind the crimes like the Wednesday morning bombing in Chabahar," Boroujerdi was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Ali Abdollahi told official IRNA news agency that the equipment and facilities nabbed on Wednesday revealed that the bombing agents were supported by the intelligent services of the region and the United States.
SNIP
It's easy to be dismissive of any statements from the Iranian state, but there have been past confirmations of US intel money going to groups that conduct armed attacks in Iran, such as Jundallah. One may wonder which of the Iranian domestic armed guerilla groups would exist without covert operations funding.
A US covert war has been waged on Iran since at least 2007, except it's not covert, but in that grey area where it is sometimes announced with pride and sometimes denied at the pleasure of the sponsor government.
This activity has subverted and tainted the civil opposition in Iran, and ends up strengthening the most repressive elements there, which suits the hardliners on this side, like the neocons who actually want an extreme government in Tehran because they'd still like to launch a full military attack.
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May 24, 2007:
ABC News reports on Bush regime finding to authorize CIA action in IranThe report presents the CIA operation as a new program, possibly conceived as an alternative to Cheney-backed plans for direct military action. The finding is called "non-lethal," meaning it authorizes propaganda and infiltration, but a lethal finding would not be reported. The report makes mention of "proxy war" via longstanding ties to mujahedeen forces inside Iran. At the end, the reporters joke that the CIA may well be happy to have them reveal the operation as a form of "rattling the cage." Ha ha ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wg3r2YSM9gJuly 7, 2008: Seymour Hersh expose in The New Yorker on efforts authorized by Congress to destabilize Iran. A decentralized or parapolitical dimension to the actions is made clear:
"Operations outside the knowledge and control of commanders have eroded 'the coherence of military strategy,' one general says." But keeping the action out of direct US control enhances plausible deniability! Whether the effects of the operation are direct or indirect, the US is still paying for it.
The Hersh article has been discussed here often before. Some excerpts:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hershPreparing the Battlefield
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh
July 7, 2008
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed. “The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.
Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.
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Hersh begins the next section with, "The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003."
The NIE release enraged the Bush regime and came in the course of a Pentagon revolt against launching a war on Iran. This period saw the dismissal or resignation of Admiral Fallon as commander of CENTCOM.
Hersh described the Fallon episode and gave evidence that the US is involved with armed groups operating in Iran:
Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. “Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing,” Fallon’s colleague said. “The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney.” The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”
In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.”
Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi—who was overthrown in 1979—was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. “This is the ultimate for the Iranians—to blame the C.I.A.,” Gardiner said. “This is new, and it’s an escalation—a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the ‘Great Satan.’ ” In Gardiner’s view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it.
Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?” One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene.
A view from a former top official of the Pakistani military:
http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/cia-has-distributed-400-million-dollars-inside-iran-to-evoke-a-revolution/Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.
In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran. “The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election,” he added.
Pakistan’s former army chief of joint staff went on to say that the US wanted to disturb the situation in Iran and bring to power a pro-US government.
He congratulated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re- election for the second term in office, noting that Pakistan relationship with Iran has improved during his 4-year presidency. “Ahmadinejad’s re-election is a decisive point in regional policy and if Pakistan and Afghanistan unite with Iran, the US has to leave the area, especially the occupied Afghanistan,” Beig added.
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It should be noted, again, that the "400 million dollars" distributed by the CIA (or other US agencies) as part of a covert operation to destabilize the Iranian government is not a claim by General Beig, but a fact as reported in the US media as well.
The question is how much of that is ending up supporting terrorist murder attacks in Iran, like the bombing this week of the Tasua mosque. (As a component of the "global war on terrorism," of course.)
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