“IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.
Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.
Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.
Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”
Meanwhile Hugh Hewitt asks why Obama hasn’t been pressed on Iran, he has been allowed to skate through the primaries spewing empty platitudes.
Senator Obama is within a few weeks of clinching the Democrats’ nomination and he has not been pressed on Iran. When the subject has come up at all, Obama has retreated into his trade-mark ambiguity dressed up in soaring rhetoric. His generalities about meeting with Ahmadinejad underscore that Obama’s not prepared or even informed on the subject, but the MSM is allowing him to march to Denver without engaging in an extended conversation about what to do with the increasing militancy of Iran (and its proxy Hezbollah).
Well, he is the chosen one….so it just wouldn’t do to press him on anything. He will make a speech and the world will become a heaven on earth. One other note the MSM missed during this whole Basra thing is the fact that the majority of political blocs supported the crackdown:
Iraq’s political blocs backed a government crackdown on Shiite militias and a demand by the country’s political council for parties to disband their militias as a condition for participation in a key local election, an Iraqi lawmaker said Sunday.
In a meeting on Saturday evening, Iraq’s political council of national security gave its backing to a government offensive against Shiite militants in oil-rich southern Basra province and other areas, MP Fouad Masum said.
The council representing the country’s sectarian, ethnic and political groups is made up of the Kurdish president, his two Sunni and Shiite vice-presidents, a Shiite premier and leaders of major political blocs.
The council endorsed a statement supporting the crackdown in Basra and other provinces and urged all political parties to disband their militias as a condition for participation in the political process, Masum told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
‘All political parties and blocs are urged to immediately disband their militias and hand in their arms to the state and switch to peaceful civilian activities as a condition to participation in the political process and election,’ the council said in a statement.
Only the Sadrist bloc of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr objected to the council’s support for the government offensive and its call for disbanding militias, said Masum from the Kurdish Alliance bloc.
In the end the only way for us to leave Iraq a successful country is to deal with Iran.
UPDATE
Good update on how the Basra fight went and is still continuing to go:
The Iraqis planned and executed the operation with little U.S. involvement and managed to commit more than 40,000 troops in high-intensity combat against well-armed, militia-terrorists in six cities — a feat that would have been impossible just six months ago.
Conventional Iraqi army and police units operated effectively together in multiple large-scale, simultaneous urban combat for the first time. Though there were inevitable foul-ups, most of the problems were logistical, not operational. All commended the courage and tenacity of the Iraqi soldiers.
The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) and Hillah SWAT units, with which we were embedded in December, killed or captured more than 200 “high profile criminals” for which they had arrest warrants. Most of those apprehended or killed were renegade members of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi — the Mahdi Army.
Intelligence collected during the operation confirms that Iranian Quds Force fighters have heavily infiltrated southern Iraq and that Iranian weapons, explosives and equipment continue to be delivered to areas previously controlled by the Mahdi Army.
Though the ISF lacks the sophisticated casualty evacuation and medical treatment available to U.S. troops, their compassion toward wounded and injured noncombatants rallied civilians to the side of the Iraqi government.
One U.S. commander summed it up: “This was a necessary operation — and it couldn’t have happened without ‘the surge.’ By going after the Shi’ite militias, Mr. al-Maliki has proven to the Sunnis that he intends to be even-handed in the process of bringing law and order to Iraq. The Iraqi troops fought well in both day and night operations. Their officers and NCOs are leading from the front. The militias — and their Iranian sponsors — got their butts kicked.”
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