Tehran calling
Eli Lake and Richard Miniter have both interviewed Osman Ali Mustapha, a former Kurdish police officer who was recruited as a spy for the Iranians. Lake notes the issuance of Iranian green cards to terrorists in Iraq. Miniter observes that Mustafa’s story "reveals the human side of the insurgency." As for the terrorist green card, Miniter reports:
Higher-ranking terrorist leaders are given laminated cards that make them untouchable by all Iranian officials, aside from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Mustafa was told that these cards were issued on the personal orders of Ali Khamane’i, Iran’s ruler. The cards, which include a picture and other identifying details, simply say that the holder is a “political refugee”—or “Karti Panahandayi” in Persian—but everyone in Iran knows what it means. Ordinary refugees do not get these cards.Here is Miniter's account of Mustafa's initial operations for Iran:
He was given a small digital camera and sent to the Iraqi city of Kirkuk to photograph U.S. bases. From the window of taxi, he shot movies and stills of American checkpoints and base perimeter security operations. Over the course of a long day he shot some 55 minutes of movies of guards, bomb-sniffing dogs, and base buildings vulnerable to attack.A few weeks ago I took part in a bloggers' interview of Ambassador David Satterfield, the State Department's Coordinator for Iraq and senior advisor to Secretary Rice. The transcript is posted here. I asked him about the contribution of Iran and Syria to the challenge we are facing in Iraq. He directed his response to the Syrian part of the question:When he returned with the “flash movies,” Iranian intelligence officers were very happy.
Next, they sent him to photograph Iranian opposition figures in Iraq, especially those connected to the Democratic Kormala party. Col. Yacubi also wanted Mustafa to discover their home addresses. These men, Mustafa was told, would be targeted for assassination. Later, I would speak to the head of that party at his secret base in the steep hills east of Sulaimaniya. A charming former communist and now self-proclaimed “neo-conservative” who advocates a federal democracy in Iran, Secretary General Abdullah Mohtadi confirmed that the Iranians have tried to kill him several times.
The fact is, as has been the case since 2004, the majority -- some 85, 90 percent of all suicide bombers, the people who are blowing up innocent Iraqi men, women and children, are coming across the Syrian border. They are 80 to 90 percent-plus foreign, not Iraqi in nationality. There is a reason why these individuals are transiting in those numbers through Syria and not through Jordan, not through Saudi Arabia. Syria has a responsibility, an obligation as a sovereign government to take control of its territory and its borders and stop this transit.In his response Ambassador Satterfield ignored the Iranian contribution to the mayhem in Iraq, a contribution that Lake's and Miniter's interviews dramatically highlight.
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