Iranian guards are terrorists, US to declare

Move aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Thursday August 16, 2007
The Guardian

The Bush administration is preparing to ramp up its confrontation with Iran by declaring part or all of the country's Revolutionary Guard a "global terrorist" organisation and targeting its extensive financial interests.

The move is extremely provocative, given that the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard Corps is an integral part of the state rather than a group outside the law. It has its own navy, air force, and ground troops, as well as specialist wings.

The Bush administration is trying to force Iran to abandon what the US claims is its ambition to build a nuclear bomb, and to end its support for Hizbullah, Hamas and other groups in the Middle East. "We are confronting Iranian behaviour across a variety of different fronts, on a number of different battlefields, if you will," said Sean McCormack, the state department spokesman. He would not comment on the Revolutionary Guard because he did not want to give them a heads-up, or advance notice, on any sanctions.

The plan is the first concrete illustration of a shift in balance from the "doves" in the Bush administration - Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and Robert Gates, the defence secretary - to the "hawks" around Dick Cheney, the vice-president, who has expressed frustration over a lack of progress by diplomats and supports eventual military action. The labelling of the Revolutionary Guard is a concession by Ms Rice and Mr Gates to Mr Cheney.

The plan is at an advanced stage: Ms Rice has informed the foreign secretary, David Miliband, of the US intention.

White House, state department and Treasury officials refused to comment publicly yesterday. The Iranian foreign ministry dismissed the suggestion of sanctions as "propaganda and psychological operations".

Throughout the year the Bush administration has been intensifying its pressure on Iran, a policy that included the dispatch of a second carrier group to the Gulf. Iran's commander-in-chief, Yahya Rahim Safavi, shrugged off the US build-up yesterday, saying: "Our coast-to-sea missile systems can now reach the breadth and length of the Gulf and Oman Sea, and no warships can pass in the Gulf without being in range of our coast-to-sea missiles."

The Revolutionary Guard has an economic portfolio which includes ownership, or part-ownership, of oil companies, hotels, and other businesses.

The White House claims the Revolutionary Guard has been sending sophisticated explosives and other weapons to Iraq, and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Ms Rice has still to formally approve the labelling of part or all the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation. The label could be applied solely to the Revolutionary Guard special unit, the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, which has been accused by Washington of involvement in Iraq, rather than the whole organisation.

The designation would mean the US regarding the Revolutionary Guard as having "committed" or posing "a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or the economy of the United States".

As well as putting pressure on Iran, the plan is aimed at influencing the United Nations security council, where China and to a lesser extent Russia are resisting further sanctions against Iran.

The Bush administration is warning the security council that, if it is not prepared to shift, then the US is prepared to act unilaterally. Ms Rice's delay in labelling the Revolutionary Guard is partly to give the security council an opportunity in which to act.

MSNBC Brian Williams Reports: The Tony Blair Interview

MSNBC Brian Williams Reports: The Tony Blair Interview. Pt4


MSNBC Brian Williams Reports: The Tony Blair Interview. Pt3


MSNBC Brian Williams Reports: The Tony Blair Interview. Pt2



MSNBC Brian Williams Reports: The Tony Blair Interview. Pt1

This is not the way to fight terrorism

In this country, the debate over Afghanistan has focused narrowly on the role of Canadian troops. Should they stay or come home? If they do stay, should they continue offensive counterinsurgency combat operations against the Taliban or play a more traditional "peacekeeping" role providing protection for aid-givers?

In fact, the real questions posed by Afghanistan are far more fundamental. They have to do with the war on terror itself and the way it is prosecuted. Specifically, they have to do with whether terror can be defeated by war. There is growing evidence it cannot.

Iraq provides the most obvious example. An invasion ostensibly designed to fight terrorists ended up creating terrorists. Most notably, it motivated a few British Muslims to bomb the London subway system. As the New York Times reported this week, jihadists who learned their trade in the Iraq insurgency are exporting their skills to neighbouring states. The entire Iraq affair has been a disaster.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. Yet there are chilling similarities. The first is that the invasion of that country in 2001 has strengthened extremists there. The second – raised by the arrest last summer of 18 Toronto-area Muslims on suspicion of terrorism – is that the repercussions of Western military operations in Afghanistan are being felt here.

Evidence for the first proposition comes from all quarters. Thanks in part to the Afghan war, extreme elements of the Taliban now dominate tribal areas in neighbouring Pakistan, forming part of the volatile mixture that threatens the stability of that regime.

In Afghanistan itself, anger is steadily mounting against foreign troops. In March a survey by the non-profit, London-based Senlis Institute found that roughly half of those polled in the area of Afghanistan where Canada is operating, now believe the Taliban will win. More than a quarter openly admit to supporting the Taliban.

That doesn't mean a quarter of the Afghan population wants to bomb the CN Tower. The Taliban is a complicated mix of tribal traditionalists, Islamic zealots and Afghan nationalists. Yet, perversely, the Western fixation with Al Qaeda seems to have raised that organization's prestige within the Taliban.

What is to be done? One answer is to wage counterinsurgency warfare in a smarter way. That's the message delivered to a parliamentary committee this week by Senlis board member Noreen MacDonald. She says Canada should spend more on aid, to win the allegiance of Afghans. Only if there is popular support, she says, can the military battle be won.

While this approach is not foolish, it continues to cast the problem of Afghanistan – like the problem of terror generally – in largely military terms. In fact, both problems are fundamentally political. Canadians may not like the obscurantist, misogynist ways of the Taliban. But plenty of Afghans do.

In the '70s, traditionalist Afghans fought their own Communist government when it tried to reform the backward social system. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support that government, they fought it, too. They are still fighting. The only difference is that they are fighting us.

So, forget the war on terror. Terror feeds on war. Paradoxically, the precondition for success in Afghanistan is peace. This is not a bromide but a fact.

However, peace is not easy. It requires political accommodation – not only with those of whom we approve but with those whose views we detest. This will be the hard part. The alternative is worse.

6 Charged in Plot to Attack Army Post

Six foreign-born Muslims were arrested and accused Tuesday of plotting to attack the Army's Fort Dix and massacre scores of U.S. soldiers - a plot investigators say was foiled when the men took a video of themselves firing assault weapons to a store to have the footage put onto a DVD.

The defendants, all of them from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base.

Authorities said there was no direct evidence connecting them to any international terror organizations such as al-Qaida. But several of the men said they were ready to kill and die "in the name of Allah," according to court records.

Their goal was "to kill as many soldiers as possible" in attacks with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns, prosecutors said.

They also allegedly spoke of attacking the Navy base in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy football game, when the place would be full of sailors, and conducted surveillance at other military installations in the region.

"This was a serious plot put together by people who were intent on harming Americans," U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said. "We're very gratified federal law enforcement was able to catch these people before they acted and took innocent life."

Investigators said they infiltrated the group with an informant well over a year ago and bided their time while they secretly recorded the defendants, five of whom lived in Cherry Hill, a Philadelphia suburb about 20 miles from Fort Dix.

One defendant, Eljvir Duka, was recorded as saying: "In the end, when it comes to defending your religion, when someone is trying attacks your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad."

The six were arrested Monday night trying to buy AK-47 assault weapons, M-16s and other weapons from an FBI informant, authorities said. They were scheduled to appear before a federal judge in Camden on Tuesday afternoon to face charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. servicemen.

Four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. All had lived in the United States for years. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.

One suspect spoke of using rocket-propelled grenades to kill at least 100 soldiers, according to court documents.

"If you want to do anything here, there is Fort Dix and I don't want to exaggerate, and I assure you that you can hit an American base very easily," Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer was recorded as saying last August.

"It doesn't matter to me whether I get locked up, arrested or get taken away," Serdar Tatar was quoted as saying. "Or I die, it doesn't matter. I'm doing it in the name of Allah."

Asked if those arrested had any links to al-Qaida, White House spokesman Tony Snow said it appears "there is no direct evidence of a foreign terrorist tie."

In court documents, prosecutors said the suspects came to the attention of authorities in January 2006 when a shopkeeper alerted the FBI about a "disturbing" video he had been asked to copy onto a DVD.

The video showed 10 young men in their early 20s "shooting assault weapons at a firing range ... while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic 'Allah Akbar' (God is great)," the complaint said. The 10 included six of those arrested, authorities said.

By March 2006, the group had been infiltrated by an informant who developed a relationship with Shnewer, and the informant secretly recorded meetings last August, according to court documents.

Christie said one of the suspects worked at Super Mario's Pizza in nearby Cookstown and delivered pizzas to the base, using that opportunity to scout out Fort Dix for an attack.

"Clearly, one of the guys had an intimate knowledge of the base from having been there delivering pizzas," Christie said.

The men also allegedly conducted surveillance at other area military installations, including Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and a Philadelphia Coast Guard station.

Besides Shnewer, Tatar and Duka, the other three men were identified in court papers as Dritan Duka, Shain Duka and Agron Abdullahu.

Fort Dix is used to train soldiers, particularly reservists. It also housed refugees from Kosovo in 1999.

The description of the suspects as "Islamic militants" caused renewed worry among New Jersey's Muslim community. Hundreds of Muslim men from New Jersey were rounded up and detained in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, but none were connected to that plot.

"If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law," said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 2001 attacks. "But when the government says `Islamic militants,' it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous."

"Don't equate actions with religion," he said.

Associated Press Writers Matt Apuzzo and Ben Feller in Washington, Geoff Mulvihill in Mount Laurel, Tom Hester Jr. in Trenton and Jeffrey Gold in Newark contributed to this story.