BREAKING: US Holds 300 Prisoners Linked to Iran
Exclusive to PJM by Richard Miniter, PJM Washington Editor
American forces in Iraq now hold some 300 prisoners tied to Iran's intelligence agencies, Pajamas Media learned from both diplomatic and military sources.
This is believed, by both sources, to be a record number of prisoners tied to Iran. Virtually all were captured in the past two months.
This week’s seizure of 15 British sailors by Iran in the contested waters of the Shattab al-Arab, the ship channel that divides Iraq and Iran, may have been payback for the capture of record number of Iranian operatives inside Iraq. “It may be a bargaining chip,” one diplomatic source said.
The intelligence community is still debating whether the unlawful detainment of British sailors was ordered by Iran’s government or was presented to it as a fait accompli by relatively low-level Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers.
The roughly 300 prisoners held in Iraq-the number grows frequently-are either Iranian nationals or Shiites recruited from neighboring countries that are employed one of its almost two dozen intelligence or paramilitary services.
The record haul of Iran-linked prisoners may not be a sign of Iran’s increasing involvement in Iraq. The Islamic Republic’s participation in the Iraq war, which includes funding, arming and training both Shiite and Sunni militias, has been known to be significant for some time.
More likely, the large number of Iran-linked prisoners reflects a change in tactics following the arrival of Multinational Force Iraq commander Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. Previously, Iranians and other foreigners could not be picked up without a provable connection to terrorism. Now, American and allied forces are encouraged to seize militants based on a reasonable suspicion of involvement in insurgent attacks. This is consistent with Iraqi law.
The number of bombings associated with Iran-backed groups seems to be declining, although both sources cautioned it is too soon to be sure.
The Pentagon received “considerable pressure” from officials in the State department and CIA to release some or all of the Iran-linked prisoners to facilitate discussions between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian officials. Apparently, Gen. Petraeus sharply disagreed, saying that he intends to hold the prisoners “until they run out of information or we run out of food,” according to our sources who heard these remarks through channels.
The two sources requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence and developing events with Iran.
More than a month ago, Pajamas Media exclusively reported that the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had fled to Iran in the face of the surge and that his Mahdi Army was breaking into pieces. More recently, Pajamas Media reported that a number of Mahdi Army commanders were seeking to negotiate with American forces. Now, the Associated Press is reporting the same developments.
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18 Comments
1. Jabba the Tutt:The Pentagon received “considerable pressure” from officials in the State department and CIA to release some or all of the Iran-linked prisoners to facilitate discussions between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian officials.
Which side are State and the CIA on? I say de-fund State and the CIA and put the money into something really effective, like the US Marines or more bombers.
Mar 25, 2007 - 3:45 am 2. Herr Morgenholz:This is more than tit-for-tat, then. This is serious Iranian desperation. What are the “300″ saying?
Mar 25, 2007 - 6:13 am 3. amr:Apparently, Gen. Petraeus sharply disagreed, saying that he intends to hold the prisoners “until they run out of information or we run out of food,” It always seems that we compromised for nothing. This is my kind of general.
Mar 25, 2007 - 6:21 am 4. TM Lutas:How many captured intelligence officers does it take to make a casus belli?
Mar 25, 2007 - 6:51 am 5. Jerry L. Underwood:Finally an GENERAL that understands war from both sides the fighing and the media,now if the WHITE HOUSE will just keep the c.i.a. and the rest of the lose at any price crowd off his back we may turn this thing around.Oh by the way that lose at any price includes the state dept. also,as well as most demo’s.
Mar 25, 2007 - 7:02 am 6. sdemetri:I suspect your “evidence” that Iran is funding Sunni militias is highly suspect. If Sunni militias are fighting Shiite militias, as news accounts report daily, the logic of Iran funding both sides is faulty, if not ridiculous.
I also suspect the claim that Sadr fled to Iran is suspect. There is more credible evidence that he is in hiding within Iraq, in the southern marsh regions or in areas closer to his historical haunts. Linking his hiding to Iran while late counter-insurgent efforts are made in Sadr City is a necessary propaganda position to cast dispersions on Iran.
Mar 25, 2007 - 7:31 am 7. Mark:What’s with sources who think that it’s OK to leak sensitive information, and then request to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the information. I can’t even say this is information, since it sounds mostly like office gossip anyways (“heard through channels):
It’s not the identity of the sources which is the sensitive intelligence. What’s sensitive is the information that was just revealed!
Instead of integrity and “I’m sorry, I can’t reveal that information due to the sensitivity of that information.”, what we’re really getting is “Well, I shouldn’t be saying this, but blah blah blah. Please don’t use my name, I need to cover my own ass.”
Well, at least they were “two sources”… which apparently makes it fit to print? Hmmmm. I would think that when it involves potentially sensitive information, they should put a little more effort into determine the veracity of the story and show a little more restraint in going to press with it.
Help me to understand who we can acknowledge that information is sensitive and yet, publish it regardless?
Mar 25, 2007 - 8:11 am 8. C-Low:I hope this leak saying we are holding 300+ Iranian agents is not timed so to soften the disgrace of a US/UK capitulation to the blantant act of aggression done by Iran to use UK hostages as barganing chips to regain their captured peeps.
If we start prisoner trading we will be stuck like Israel in a never ending cycle of having to give ever larger payoffs for hostage taken troops/citizens. We cannot allow that cycle to be set as a president.
Consequences not Capitulation should be the results of taking hostages.
Mar 25, 2007 - 9:12 am 9. nate zuckerman:Iran grabs Brits; US (there is no multin ational force) grabs Iranians…what does this tell us?that the invasion got rid of Saddam and allowed Iran to become a major player and that there is nothing we seem able to do to stop this and that it is causing lives and harm to our troops.
Mar 25, 2007 - 10:20 am 10. F. Rottles:Time perhaps to divvy the nation in three and tell them they asked for this and now they have what they seem to want.
But they don’t want to divvy up their country.
And they don’t want their country to be the playground of the hostile Iranian regime.
And they want the Coalition forces to remain to buy them the time to stand on their own.
That means standing against the Iranian sponsored paramilitaries. It means asserting their soveriengty over their shared border with Iran.
It means taking into custody, as per Iraqi law, militants based on a reasonable suspicion of involvement in insurgent attacks.
Three hundred. That tells us more than enough about the Iranian regime and about the paramilitaries they sponsor with both blood and treasure. They are fueling the illegitimate fight against the freedom and newly asserted democracy of the Iraqi People.
Three hundred more in the next coupel of months would be very helpful in defending the unity of Iraq and in defending the beachhead for true reform and freedom in that part of the world. Iran’s regime won’t tolerate such reforms within its own borders and is proven to be hostile toward such reforms within the territories of its neighbors — and others in the region.
This new effort of the Coaliton, under the impetus of a new and unflinching American Commander, is very welcomed by the Iraqis and by those of us who see this as a just struggle against evil.
Mar 25, 2007 - 11:07 am 11. Lastango:This state of affairs may reflect a change of US policy, and not that of Iran.
Perhaps 300 is “a record number of prisoners” (my italics) and the reason “Virtually all were captured in the past two months” is because the other, previously-captured Iran-linked operatives were released – so there was no accumulation.
That would be of a piece with the mass releases of many thousands of insurgents and terrorists inside Iraq and hundreds more from Gitmo. Those people returned to fight against and kill our troops, yet the Bush administration continued the practice as part of its self-defeating War Lite.
Here’s a bit of what F. J. Bing West, former assistant secretary of defense, and currently a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, recently said on the topic (PDF file):
This has been going on for years, and reflects the White House policy of making political negatives disappear through sleight-of-hand, outreach and “negotiations,” of the sort that blessed us with Iran/al Sadr’s empire encompassing all of southern Iraq.
Mar 25, 2007 - 11:49 am 12. Jonny:“I suspect your “evidence” that Iran is funding Sunni militias is highly suspect. If Sunni militias are fighting Shiite militias, as news accounts report daily, the logic of Iran funding both sides is faulty, if not ridiculous.”
Why? The idea is to sow strife and conflict inside Iraq, and it’s working. Iran is playing both sides against each other, what is so hard to believe about that?
The rest of your post doesn’t make sense either, I won’t bother with it.
Mar 25, 2007 - 3:01 pm 13. Scotty:Why did the gutless wonder commanding the nasty-looking destroyer the Brit. sailors came from not interdict the Iranian gunboats and nip the problem in the bud? So many commanders these days (US as well) are simply bureaucrats in uniform and not real military people. Thank God for Portreus.
Mar 25, 2007 - 3:59 pm 14. Albert J. Williams:I agree with Scotty,the inaction on the part of the Commodore commanding
Mar 25, 2007 - 4:59 pm 15. clazy:the British ship was beyond belief.
What good is a multi-million dollar
warship if you can’t or won’t defend
your own crew members?
Me three–which is why I felt so stupid when I read Mario Loyola’s Saturday post at The Corner, which cast a skeptical light on the event: “Iranian Revolutionary Guards seize fifteen British sailors supposedly on patrol in Iraqi waters, but nearby British warship does not interdict the RG raid, suggesting strongly that the Brits were not in Iraqi waters.”
That may be the wrong explanation, but surely something other than chickensh** cowardice explains the captain’s failure to respond.
Mar 25, 2007 - 8:04 pm 16. Bob Miller:Can State Department employees be bartered for allied captives of Iran??
Mar 26, 2007 - 11:20 am 17. RonF:What are the “300″ saying?
The question is almost worth as much as the answer. The fact that Iran has to ask that question and doesn’t know the answer forces them to try to act to counter the effects of multiple different answers, sometimes to cross purposes I’ll bet.
sdemetri:
If Sunni militias are fighting Shiite militias, as news accounts report daily, the logic of Iran funding both sides is faulty, if not ridiculous.
Is the phrase “playing both ends against the middle” unfamiliar to you? Iran doesn’t need to have any one side win; they need to have enough civil strife that everyone loses and the country splits apart. Then they get to come in and cherry-pick the pieces.
nate zuckerman:
Iran grabs Brits; US (there is no multinational force) grabs Iranians…what does this tell us?
That you apparently think that British subjects are American citizens. Newsflash; in English, “multi-” means “more than one”.
Scotty:
Why did the gutless wonder commanding the nasty-looking destroyer the Brit. sailors came from not interdict the Iranian gunboats and nip the problem in the bud?
I am tempted to join the chorus agreeing with you, but a) we don’t know the British commander’s ROE, and b) we don’t know what the odds were that blowing the hell out of the Iranians would have gotten the 15 British sailors killed in the bargain and what calculation the British equivalent of the JAG requires of the commander in such a situation. This law is being fought by military lawyers a lot more than previous ones.
Mar 27, 2007 - 11:25 am 18. curious:to scotty:
“Why did the gutless wonder commanding the nasty-looking destroyer the Brit. sailors came from not interdict the Iranian gunboats and nip the problem in the bud? So many commanders these days (US as well) are simply bureaucrats in uniform and not real military people. Thank God for Portreus.”
The British navy is obviously under rules of engagement that prevented the captain of the destroyer from firing on the Iranians. The USS Cole was under similar rules of engagement which allowed a small boat to come right up to its hull.
Rules of engagement are set by the military in order to enforce POLITICAL instructions. When the British navy was the fearsome force to be reckoned with that it was up until the labor party dismatled it, British fleet officers often ignored the instructions from politicians, in one well known case in WWII a British fleet officer ignored a direct order to withdraw his ships, which were evacuating British soldiers from Crete, and leave the soldiers (many of whom were wounded) on the shore, due to German planes which were bombing and strafing his ships. The fleet officer replied to this order “Sir, it takes 3 years to build a ship, it takes 300 years to build a tradition, I will not abandon these British soldiers to the Germans, we will not leave until every single one of them has been evacuated, come what may”. Unfortunately for the British people, their peace loving labor party threw away 300 years of tradition that was built with the blood and courage of people like this admiral, when they dismantled the British navy, the British people are now paying a very heavy price.
Mar 27, 2007 - 12:18 pm