Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Are the Iranians shelling Iraqi Kurdistan?
Reuters (India), an organization not prone to carrying "neocon" water, is reporting claims from Iraqi Kurdistan that the Iranians are violating Iraq's borders:
Kurdish authorities in northeastern Iraq said on Tuesday they were investigating the authenticity of leaflets warning villagers to evacuate ahead of an Iranian military offensive against Kurdish rebels.
Hundreds of villagers have fled their homes in Iraq's mountainous northeast while others hid in caves after what local authorities said was days of intermittent shelling by Iran across the border.
So far there has been no official comment from either Tehran or Baghdad about the shelling.
Notwithstanding the claims of the left that the Bush administration is overstating Iranian perfidy (link via Glenn) for the purpose of justifying a military strike against the Islamic Republic, neither the White House nor the American media have made much of this news. No doubt this is because the actual attitude of the White House is precisely the opposite of that supposedly feared by Bush administration critics: Rather than wanting to build demand for military action against Iran, the administration fears that circumstances will force it to take military action it desperately wants to avoid. What circumstances might those be? An overt Iranian attack on Iraq, for starters.
In any case, Stratfor believes that Iran is trying to gain the support of the Turks and distract the attention of the United States from its ongoing "surge" against Shiite militia in southern Iraq (from two separate analyses today):
Iran has taken advantage of deteriorating U.S.-Turkish relations over what Turkey sees as the United States' unwillingness to crack down on Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in northern Iraq. Whenever Iran perceives that Turkey's frustration with the United States is at its highest, Tehran will launch a military offensive against Kurdish rebel hideouts in northeastern Iraq to win the hearts and minds of the Turks. By strengthening relations with Turkey, Iran hopes to shift the balance of power in the region, further undermining the strength of the Arab states....
Meanwhile, U.S. forces are fully engaged in surge-related security operations farther south. This massing of forces is key to success, and the United States has few troops to spare. Ultimately, the U.S. presence this far north and this close to the border always has been minimal.
Should the Iranians keep operations at a relatively low tempo, continuing limited strikes, the job of countering their actions will be difficult in light of U.S. commitments in the south. But should operations escalate to the point where troop formations are occupying and attempting to hold parts of Iraq, they could draw the attention of U.S. airpower. After years of honing their ability to strike at irregular forces, U.S. fighter pilots will welcome more conventional troop formations as easy targets.
But a strong U.S. ground presence along the border is exactly the distraction the United States does not need right now. And the Georgians, to whom U.S. forces had been hoping to allocate a relatively easy and manageable duty, could prove insufficient should Iranian operations escalate.
Things are getting complicated over there.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Aug 22, 11:35:00 AM:
Step One: Deploy "FIREFINDER" counter artillery/counter rocket radar in the Northern areas.
Step Two: Deploy a battery or two of M270 MLRS systems armed with cluster munitions.
Step Three: FIREFINDER detects incoming Iranian artillery, uploads origin data to MLRS, MLRS fires back.
Step Four: Iranians pick small peices of former artillery crews off the ground.
These assets are in theater and are probably not being used for the "surge".
By 
Jimmy K., at
Wed Aug 22, 11:13:00 PM:
Stratfor does get your mind in gear.
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Aug 24, 06:59:00 PM:
Iran does have its own problems with Kurdish separatists, and this could be a legitimate retaliation against a Kurdish raid.
Not everything states do has to do with great power politics.
