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United States is drawing up plans to strike on Iranian insurgency camp

Michael Smith
Read Mick Smith's Defense blog.

The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilize Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country.
Despite a belligerent stance by Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the back burner since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in 2006, the sources said.
However, US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force.
“If the situation in Basra goes back to what it was like before, America is likely to blame Iran and carry out a surgical strike on a militant training camp across the border in Khuzestan,” said one source, referring to a frontier province.

They acknowledged Iran was unlikely to cease involvement in Iraq and that, however limited a US attack might be, the fighting could escalate.

Although American defence chiefs are firmly opposed to any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, they believe a raid on one of the camps training Shi’ite militiamen would deliver a powerful message to Tehran.

British officials believe the US military tends to overestimate the effect of the Iranian involvement in Iraq.

But they say there is little doubt that the Revolutionary Guard exercises significant influence over splinter groups of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, who were the main targets of recent operations in Basra.

The CBS television network reported last week that plans were being drawn up for an attack on Iran, citing an officer who blamed the “increasingly hostile role” Iran was playing in Iraq.

The American news reports were unclear about the precise target of such an action and referred to Iran’s nuclear facilities as the likely objective.

According to the intelligence sources there will not be an attack on Iran’s nuclear capacity. “The Pentagon is not keen on that at all. If an attack happens it will be on a training camp to send a clear message to Iran not to interfere.”

President George W Bush is known to be determined that he should not hand over what he sees as “the Iran problem” to his successor. A limited attack on a training camp may give an impression of tough action, while at the same time being something that both Gates and the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, could accept.

Language on Iran in the State Dept. terrorism report released today.

IRAN

Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism. Elements of
its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were directly involved in
the planning and support of terrorist acts throughout the region and
continued to support a variety of groups in their use of terrorism to
advance their common regional goals. Iran provides aid to Palestinian
terrorist groups, Lebanese Hizballah, Iraq-based militants, and
Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Iran remains a threat to regional stability and U.S. interests in the
Middle East because of its continued support for violent groups, such
as HAMAS and Hizballah, and its efforts to undercut the democratic
process in Lebanon, where it seeks to build Iran's and Hizballah's
influence to the detriment of other Lebanese communities.
Iran is a principal supporter of groups that are implacably opposed to
the Middle East Peace Process, and continues to maintain a
high-profile role in encouraging anti-Israel terrorist activity –
rhetorically, operationally, and financially. Supreme Leader Khamenei
and President Ahmadinejad praised Palestinian terrorist operations,
and Iran provided Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist groups,
notably HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command, with extensive funding, training, and weapons.

Despite its pledge to support the stabilization of Iraq, Iranian
authorities continued to provide lethal support, including weapons,
training, funding, and guidance, to some Iraqi militant groups that
target Coalition and Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians. In
this way, Iranian government forces have been responsible for attacks
on Coalition forces. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-Qods
Force, continued to provide Iraqi militants with Iranian-produced
advanced rockets, sniper rifles, automatic weapons, mortars that have
killed thousands of Coalition and Iraqi Forces, and explosively formed
projectiles (EFPs) that have a higher lethality rate than other types
of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and are specially designed to
defeat armored vehicles used by Coalition Forces. The Qods Force, in
concert with Lebanese Hizballah, provided training outside Iraq for
Iraqi militants in the construction and use of sophisticated IED
technology and other advanced weaponry. These individuals then passed
on this training to additional militants inside Iraq, a
"train-the-trainer" program. In addition, the Qods Force and Hizballah
have also provided training inside Iraq. In fact, Coalition Forces
captured a Lebanese Hizballah operative in Iraq in 2007.

Iran's IRGC-Qods Force continued to provide weapons and financial aid
to the Taliban to support anti-U.S. and anti-Coalition activity in
Afghanistan. Since 2006, Iran has arranged a number of shipments of
small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades,
mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, and plastic explosives, possibly
including man-portable air defense systems (MANPADs), to the Taliban.
Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa'ida (AQ)
members it has detained, and has refused to publicly identify those
senior members in its custody. Iran has repeatedly resisted numerous
calls to transfer custody of its AQ detainees to their countries of
origin or third countries for interrogation or trial. Iran also
continued to fail to control the activities of some AQ members who
fled to Iran following the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

(Read a Related Story: John Bolton: US should bomb Iranian camps)