Iran ups the ante by impersonating, kidnapping and executing US soldiers
Iranian Special Forces have apparently staged a direct attack on US soldiers in Iraq. This appears to us to be a significant escalation of the war. The Iranian soldiers had American equipment, including GMC Suburbans and radios, according to Bill Roggio, and they spoke English. We wonder if any of the Iranian Qods Force soldiers are in fact American citizens. AP:
gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons abducted four U.S. soldiers last week at the provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and then shot them to death…two of the soldiers were handcuffed together in the back seat of a sport utility vehicle near the southern Iraqi town of Mahawil. A third dead soldier was on the ground nearby. The fourth died on the way to the hospital…
The brazen assault, 50 miles south of Baghdad, was conducted by nine to 12 gunmen posing as a U.S. security team, the military confirmed. The attackers traveled in black GMC Suburbans — the type used by U.S. government convoys — had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English, according to senior U.S. military and Iraqi officials.
Bill Roggio adds:
this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. My sources agreed this is far to sophisticated an operation for the Mahdi Army or Badr Corps, while al-Qaeda in Iraq would have a difficult time mounting such an operation in the Shia south. “The Karbala Government Center raid the other day was a little too professional for JAM [Jaish al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi Army],” according to a military source.
This raid required specific intelligence, in depth training for the agents to pass as American troops, resources to provide for weapons, vehicles, uniforms, identification, radios and other items needed to successfully carry out the mission. Hezbollah’s Imad Mugniyah executed a similar attack against Israeli forces on the Lebanese border, which initiated the Hezbollah-Israeli war during the summer of 2006.
“The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution,” said Army Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, spokesman for Multinational Division Baghdad. “The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, bypassing the Iraqi police in the compound.”…Also recovered at the site were U.S. Army-type combat uniforms, boots, radios and a non-U.S. made rifle…
This action would appear to be a stick in the eye of the President’s planned “surge,” and a reprisal and negotiating leverage in the Irbil incident, in which the US took Iranians captive from their “diplomatic mission” in Iraq. The Iranian action appears to us to be straight out of the Untouchables: “You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?”
It is no wonder, then, that President Bush has just “authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq.” This is not the last chapter in the story of escalation.