Posted on 04/10/2008 2:23:16 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
IRAN'S BUSTED IRAQ BID
By AMIR TAHERI
April 10, 2008 -- A GAMBLE that proved too costly. That's how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran's state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous "uprising." Rather, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq's second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse.
Tehran's decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions:
* Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn't have the courage to defend Basra at the risk of burning his bridges with the Islamic Republic in Iran.
* The international force would be in no position to intervene in the Basra battle. The British, who controlled Basra until last December, had no desire to return, especially if this meant getting involved in fighting. The Americans, meanwhile, never had enough troops to finish off al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, let alone fight Iran and its local militias on a new front.
* The Shiite clerical leadership in Najaf would oppose intervention by the new Iraqi security forces in a battle that could lead to heavy Shiite casualties.
The Iranian plan - developed by Revolutionary Guard's Quds (Jerusalem) unit, which is in charge of "exporting the Islamic Revolution" - aimed at a quick victory. To achieve that, Tehran spent vast sums persuading local Iraqi security personnel to switch sides or to remain neutral.
The hoped-for victory was to be achieved as part of a massive Shiite uprising spreading from Baghdad to the south via heartland cities such as Karbala, Kut and al-Amarah. A barrage of rockets and missiles against the "Green Zone" in Baghdad and armed attacks on a dozen police stations and Iraqi army barracks in the Shiite heartland were designed to keep the Maliki government under pressure.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Ping!
This sounds like it should be required reading for the Democrat leadership.
I’d been waiting for his take on what had happened. I wish it had come out before Petraeus testified, so that the Democrats could have been routed. “Fiasco” —not quite.
Not that we needed convincing, but how many stories do you have to read like this before realizing that someone like Obama in the White House would be a total screaming disaster?
just like Clinton. His policy of sanctions left Saddam twisting in the wind strategically with a hollowed out military that in no way stood as a regional power to confront Iran, hence Saddam’s continued shell game that he had WMD’s , just as he’d had to use them in the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq finally getting to the point it can stand up and fight. This is the point in the Viet Nam war where the Democrats yank the rug out from under the regime we supported and let the enemy win. Maybe not this time.
So this was Iran’s first attempt at a “Tet offensive” and predictably the MSM chimed in to give them the needed propaganda moral victory.
I knew there was more to this than the stupid MSM and there jihadist stringers were reporting, No wonder Maliki responded the way he did and more power to him. Iran wants to turn Iraq into Lebanon using the Mahdi militia as its front.
The whole gambit was to have this "route" in advance of Petraeus' testimony which would lead to a US withdrawal. This operation was intended to be the Iraqi "Tet" offensive, but Iran wanted to do it on the "cheap" apparently.
The difference being that in this case, the Iraqi Army massed and headed south an overwhelming force and were in the process of taking apart Iran's whole presence, when Iran decided to cry uncle.
Despite what the international press was saying, internally, this also confirmed that Al Sadr is just a puppet of Iran and that has got to hurt. In the end, Maliki now has to finish taking apart the Madhi Army as they have been exposed as foreign agents.
bookmark for later.
It's "rout" not "route". A "route" is a road or way. Your dispatcher "routes" you from A to B; a large army "routs" you.
FReepers please take notice! I don't know how many times I've seen this one.
That, and "poured over the documents" instead of the correct "pored over". "Poured over" suggests chocolate sauce or maple syrup.
</editkibitzing>
Very plausible. And I shouldn't doubt that Howard Dean's initials are somewhere on the Iranian op-order. He was on Tavis Smiley last night -- what a maroon. I'm really tired of Smiley playing "amen corner" for all these Dims with my money. Of course, Bill Moyers is the real pain in the ass. We get 90 minutes of his stuff every Friday night, between him and his altar-boy Brancaccio.
It’s a hopeless cause. But sometimes you just have to chime in. I heard Rush call the Democrats “nimrods” yesterday. Apparently he doesn’t know that Nimrod is/was a mighty hunter.
Leni
Ever since Bugs Bunny applied the name to an opponent, the scriptural Nimrod has had a tough row to hoe. Nevertheless, when it comes to today's democrats, "nimrod," "maroon," "nincowpoop" and "im-bessel" are applicable, if overly mild.
Mr. niteowl77
Very interesting article. Should be required reading for our Congress and Senate before they call for the troops to leave Iraq.
What I dont understand is how Iran can carry out operations like this and yet continue to deny any involvement in Iraqs destabilization. Even Maliki has sent representatives to Iran to say “Please stop meddling in our affairs.” It reminds me of a bully beating someone up on the street, and every time police show up saying “I had nothing to do with it.” Iran REALLY needs to have its clock cleaned!
FReepers please take notice! I don't know how many times I've seen this one.
That, and “poured over the documents” instead of the correct “pored over”. “Poured over” suggests chocolate sauce or maple syrup.”
Oooh — don't forget the “this is very series” instead of Serious. :-)
tet part two, is slated for the week before the US elections
jveritas Ping!
It will indeed of course all this will be totally overlooked by the MSM. Its great to wake up everyday to world where history has been wiped clean that night.
Hopefully the Iraq government and Iraq military will be another step down the road and will handle those events even better. Although as the truth comes out little by little about Basra, I must say they handled that better than I expected.
Thus the MSM’s narratives fail them in two respects. It fails them in a third respect: they forget that Iranians as not Arabs, and this difference sometimes is quite a point of difference between Iraqis and Iranians.
The benefit to the Iraq government is tremendous. Their troops secured a huge victory, they established themselves as the big dog in Traq, Sadr has been weakened and the lack of support for Sadr’s (Iran) play shows that people are following the government.
As long as our military is available for back up they can check Iran.
Isn’t this what we have been hoping for?
Now it’s time to pay them back in SPADES. We should be shoveling help to any group that wants to take the mullahs down.
bump
Yes its exactly what I have hoped for all along and I agree this has been perceived by the Iraqi’s as good news. It has won a renewed respect from me as well.
I have known all along that the only way to defeat terrorism is through freedom, and I have felt all along that when given the chance Iraq was the best chance of that happening in the Middle East.
But I have to say the Iraqi’s surprised me somewhat in this instance. I at first feared this was some form of political infighting but now as things come into perspective this was strictly a strike against Iran and other outside influences.
I guess sometimes its tough to keep things sorted out, after all you have to wade through a mile of MSM feces just to get at even a small nugget of truth.
you should of added the requisite apostrophe on "mispelling's," although personally I could care less.
The terrorist regime in Iran has been defeated in Iraq.
Wow, this is big.
you know, very few freepers do I track on the basis of issues. I just know he commented a lot and then one day was gone. There was even a thread last fall where a number of others brought it up. I hope he’s o.k. whatever. You (or at least I do)get to miss people from our community.
Was it too tight to begin with?
Oh, btw, you misspelled misspellings.
I recall when I was posting the results of my engineering analysis of the Murrah building, that any thread with "OKC", "Murrah" "FBI" or, even, "bombing" could be counted on to have a response -- usually within a minute or so of posting -- from Sinkspur, _Jim, or one other FReepername I have mercifully dropped from the old memory bank. I remember FReeper comments like, "Wow, that was quick! Who's manning the _Jim cubicle at the FBI/ATF tonight?" ;-)
Of course, their trademark was snide, disparaging, ad hominem attacks -- with nothing substantive. That trio still owes me a response to my serious question:
"You guys found lots of blue plastic barrel fragments scattered all over downtown OKC -- even on the tops of buildings. Your supposed sketch by McVeigh of the bomb setup inside the Ryder truck showed the three empty, blue-painted steel VP Racing Fuels nitromethane barrels standing against the back door of the Ryder truck. Where is the evidence that you found any trace of those blue, steel 50-gallon drums? (They should have wound up near -- or beyond -- the little red car that was smashed by the truck's rear axle...)"
Got lots of snide comments, but...I'm still waiting for a substantive, honest answer...
On porpoise, of course.
Leni
Sadr: Sistani told me to keep the Mahdi Army; SCIRI: No, he didn’t
You will notice the report is coming from the Blogosphere..
Thanks.
The terrorist regime in Iran has been defeated in Iraq.
Set back, yes. Defeated? Time will show.It is only too possible that we will be defeated on November 4.
LOL, you can edit for me any time.
Ah grasshopper, man who watches PBS likely to get dizzy from liberal spin. Perhaps radio is your cure. Hugh Hewett is on about the same time, and is generally not a waste of time.
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