Iran and Iraq

Juan Cole makes some good points here on the issue of Iranian training for Iraqis at his Informed Comment blog 08/20/07:

The US military hasn't found any Iranian trainers in Iraq or any training camps, but like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, that you can't find them doesn't mean they are not there. What I cannot understand is why the Pentagon needs Iranians in Iraq as a plot device. The Iraqi Badr Corps, tens of thousands strong, was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and it has been alleged that some Badr corpsmen are still on the Iranian payroll. It is the paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, America's chief ally in Iraq. What would the IRGC know that Badr does not? Why bother to send revolutionary guardsmen when the country is thick with Badr fighters anyway (who have all the same training)? I think the US is just embarrassed because Badr is its major ally in Iraq, and Pentagon spokesmen are over-compensating by imagining Iranian training camps inside Iraq. What an idea. I mean, don't we have, like, satellites that would see them? Wouldn't they be visible on google earth? Every day the Pentagon b.s. about Iran gets more fantastic and frantic. Methinks some people, like Patton, are upset that the politicians always pull them back and leave them one more war to fight.

He references the following report: U.S. says Iranians train Iraqi insurgents by Chris Collins, McClatchy Newspapers 08/19/07.

In a later post, Cole also calls attention to these two reports in The Independent for 08/20/07 by Nizar Latif and Phil Sands: Mehdi fighters 'trained by Hizbollah in Lebanon'; and, Muqtada al-Sadr: The British are retreating from Basra.

Tags: iran, irak-krieg, iraq war

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