 IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.
Nancy Pelosi won't like that...
| ... she's already told him what she wants to hear ... |
Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the ShiÂ’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.
Mahdis getting their master's orders
... while their fearless leader Reg Mookie was forced to remain behind in Iran ... |
Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.
Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”
Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite Iranian Tool™ cleric, has called for 1m people to march on Baghdad on Wednesday – the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital – when Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, will be briefing Congress.
| Further evidence that Iran wants the Basra affair to be seen in the U.S. as another Tet ... |
A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.” Another Iraqi source described the US general as “furious” that al-Maliki moved against the militias into Basra without consultation and had to rely on US forces to bail him out.
| Exactly who got bailed out? Sadr's boys asked for the ceasefire ... |
Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire. “When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,” he said.
I'd bet that he's wrong |