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2 Iran: Blowback,
detainee-style By Karen J
Greenberg
Introduction by Tom
Engelhardt: Relations between the United
States and Iran are heating up again.
In
the past week, while two US aircraft-carrier
strike forces continued to patrol the Persian
Gulf, US accusations against the Iranians have
escalated. US officials have insisted that the
Iranians are supplying sophisticated roadside
bombs to Iraqi
insurgents (who are the
enemies of their Shi'ite allies). Now this week
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "tied Iran's
government to large shipments of weapons to the
Taliban in Afghanistan and said on Wednesday such
quantities were unlikely without Tehran's
knowledge". Similarly, Under Secretary of State
Nicholas Burns told CNN: "There's irrefutable
evidence the Iranians are now doing this."
In Baghdad, General David Petraeus, head
of President George W Bush's "surge" operation,
also lashed out at the Iranians, saying they are
funding, arming, training and even in some cases
directing the activities of extremists and militia
elements..
For the Bush administration, it
seems, Iran has become the explanation for
everything that has gone wrong, even, last week,
in the Gaza Strip.
According to Brian Ross
of ABC (American Broadcasting Co) News, the
Central Intelligence Agency has helped launch
secret terror operations inside Iran and Bush has
signed a "non-lethal presidential finding" to
"mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize
the Iranian government". In addition, the
administration has been waging a complex, partly
covert, "financial war" against Iran; it also has
a US$75 million fund to "promote democracy" or a
"velvet revolution".
In the meantime, the
New York Times reports that a struggle continues
within the administration about whether or not to
launch an air attack against Iranian nuclear
facilities before Bush leaves office. Vice
President Dick Cheney and his supporters, as well
as beleaguered neo-cons now increasingly outside
the government, continue to push for this.
In the meantime, the Iranians, who
previously captured and then released a boatload
of British sailors, now seem to be rounding up and
imprisoning any US citizen - in this case, four
Iranian-American scholars and activists with dual
nationality - who can be found in Iran and, in the
past week, angrily linked their fate to that of
five Iranian consular officials taken by American
soldiers in a raid in Iraqi Kurdistan in January
and held uncharged and largely incommunicado ever
since.
"We will make the US regret its
repulsive illegal action against Iran's consulate
and its officials," state-run Mehr News quoted
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying. All
this is happening in the context of a massive
crackdown on intellectuals, activists, union
leaders and academics, a grim, fundamentalist
"cultural revolution" - aimed in part at the Bush
administration's planning for that "velvet
revolution".
In addition, Admiral Ali
Shamkhani, a key military adviser to Iranian
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned
that, within an hour of a US attack on the
country's nuclear facilities, the Iranians would
lob "dozens, maybe hundreds" of missiles into the
Gulf states that host US bases (and enormous oil
reserves).
This list only scratches the
surface of the ever-widening set of disputes and
faceoffs between the two ill-matched powers. This
dangerous dance of fundamentalist regimes remains
one of the more potentially explosive situations
on the planet, whether either side actually plans
to attack the other or not.
In the midst of this are
those four US citizens, under arrest in Iran,
labeled "detainees" and, tragically, pawns in a
far larger struggle. In "Blowback,
detainee-style", Karen J Greenberg points out that
"detainee" is "the word the Bush administration
coined to deal with suspected terrorist captives
who, they argued, should be subjected to
extra-legal treatment as part of the 'war on
terror'. Now, that terminology is, as critics long
predicted might happen, being turned against US
citizens."
Iran:
Blowback, detainee-style By Karen J Greenberg
For Americans, it should be startling to
see the word "detainee" suddenly appear in a
different country, on a different continent and
referring not to alleged jihadist terrorists but
to a group of Americans.
After all,
"detainee" is the word the Bush administration
adopted to deal with suspected terrorist captives
who, they argued, should be subjected to
extra-legal treatment as part of the "war on
terror". Now, that terminology is, as critics long
predicted might happen, being turned against US
citizens. I am referring to the current detention
of Americans in Iran.
President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad's government currently holds in
custody Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz
Azima and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American scholars
and activists accused of being spies and or
employees of the US government intent on fomenting
dissent and disruption within Iran. A fifth
American, Robert
Levinson, a former Federal Bureau
of Investigation agent engaged in business of an
unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8.
The four are apparently behind bars at
Tehran's Evin Prison, notorious for its special
wing for political prisoners and, among
human-rights activists, for being the location of
the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian
journalist in 2003. Evin and other Iranian prisons
are cited by Human Rights Watch for frequent
torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian
dissidents.
The Iranian government has
said the detained are threats to "national
security", despite protests that they were
visiting their families and/or engaged in purely
peaceful work. The US government has been denied
information on their treatment and the possible
accusations against them.
The
administration of President George W Bush is
naturally incensed over the incarceration of these
Americans, as well its officials should be. "It is
absolutely incredible to us," said State
Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, "to think
that there could be any possible doubt in the
Iranians' minds that these individuals are there
simply to conduct normal, basic human
interactions, including family visits."
President Bush himself has insisted that
"their presence in Iran poses no threat". The
Associated Press reported that Bush was also
"disturbed" by the fact that Iran has still not
provided any information about the "welfare and
whereabouts" of the missing
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