Report: US tried to abduct senior Iranian officials
Failed American attempt to kidnap two senior Iranian security officers on official visit to northern Iraq was starting pistol for crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines, Independent reports
According to the report, one of the senior Iranians was the deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that the next two days were "fairly critical" to resolving the dispute over the seized British navy crew, after Iran's chief international negotiator offered a new approach to end the standoff with Tehran.
"The next 48 hours will be fairly critical," Blair told Scotland's Real Radio. He said Ali Larijani's suggestion of talks offered hope of an end to the crisis. "If they want to resolve this in a diplomatic way the door is open," the prime minister.
According to the Independent, early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
The aim of the raid, the report said, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
The Independent noted that better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defense to realize that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf.
'As if Iran had tried to kidnap heads of CIA'
The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.
"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran.
According to the Independent, the attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighboring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.
US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces."
According to the British newspaper, however, this explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.
Meanwhile, Russia's top general told local media on Tuesday that the United States could not defeat Iran although its military forces in the Gulf are capable of striking the Islamic republic.
"It is possible to damage Iran's military and industrial potential, but it is impossible to win," Interfax news agency quoted General Yuri Baluyevsky, head of the Russian general staff, as saying.
"However, such possible strikes (on Iran) would be a huge political mistake," he said.
