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Attack Iran, US chief ordered British
Sooner or later the Mullah’s names will be Mud.
America’s military commander in Iraq ordered British troops to prepare a full-scale ground offensive against Iranian forces that had crossed the border and grabbed disputed territory. An attack would almost certainly have provoked open conflict with Iran. But the British chose instead to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels. "If we had attacked the Iranian positions, all hell would have broken loose," a defence source said yesterday. "We would have had the Iranians to our front and the Iraqi insurgents picking us off at the rear."

The incident was disclosed by a senior British officer at a conference in London last week and is reported in today’s edition of Defence Analysis. "Some Iranian border and observation posts were re-positioned over the border, broadly a kilometre into Iraq," a Ministry of Defence spokesman said. The incident began last July when Revolutionary Guards pushed about a kilometre into Iraq to the north and east of Basra in an apparent attempt to reoccupy territory which they claimed belonged to Iran. Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez then ordered the British to prepare to send in several thousand troops to attack the Revolutionary Guard positions. The Revolutionary Guard Corps has 125,000 soldiers, making it 25 per cent larger than the entire British Army, and is equipped with 500 tanks, 600 armoured personnel carriers and 360 artillery weapons.
Sammy used to have the fourth largest army in the world. I think it was second in barracks-square ferocity. Iraq and Iran fought to a stalemate before Sammy decided to gobble up Kuwait, which barely had an army.
The incident is reminiscent of the exchange during the Kosovo conflict between the American general, Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander Europe, and Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the British commander. The Iran-Iraq incident lasted around a week and was resolved by a telephone conversation between Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Kamal Kharrazi, his Iranian counterpart, British officials said. "It did look rather nasty at the time," one official said. "But we were always confident it was a mistake and could be resolved by diplomatic means. We got in touch with Baghdad and said, ’Don’t do anything silly; we are talking to the Iranians.’ " While Mr Straw was trying to resolve the issue peacefully, British military commanders on the ground were calming their Iranian counterparts, the ministry said.
Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-06-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=36794