NYT : U.S. Calls Iranian Official Part of Elite Force

Monday, October 08, 2007

U.S. Calls Iranian Official Part of Elite Force

By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER | October 8, 2007

BAGHDAD, Oct. 7 — The American military command here increased its criticism of Iran on Sunday, accusing that country’s ambassador of undisclosed membership in a Revolutionary Guard force and announcing the arrests of three men it described as Iranian agents responsible for kidnappings and weapons smuggling.

The latest accusations came as a series of car bomb attacks in the capital killed at least nine people, apparently all civilians, including one blast near the Iranian Embassy that left three people dead, officials said.

The United States has increasingly accused Iran of involvement in planning and executing attacks against Iraq’s government and American military operations in Iraq — accusations that the Iranian government has repeatedly denied.

On several occasions American military commanders have said the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran was responsible for supplying anti-American militia forces here with particularly lethal bombs that have been used to kill American troops. The Bush administration has been considering whether to classify the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group.

But Sunday appeared to be the first instance in which the Americans had publicly asserted that Iran’s top diplomat in Iraq was himself a member of the Revolutionary Guard.

The accusation was made by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American military commander, who made the remarks to CNN while he was traveling with a small group of reporters to a military base on the Iranian border. He said, “We have absolute assurance” that a number of Iranians detained by the Americans in Iraq were members of the Quds Force.

“The Quds Force controls the policy for Iraq; there should be no confusion about that either,” General Petraeus said. “The ambassador is a Quds Force member. Now he has diplomatic immunity and therefore he is obviously not subject — and he is acting as a diplomat.”

General Petraeus did not provide details on how he knew that the ambassador, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, who has held talks with the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, belonged to the Quds Force. Iranian Embassy officials could not be reached Sunday night to comment on the general’s assertions.

The American military command also said it had arrested three men with ties to Iran who were responsible for the kidnapping of five British citizens in Baghdad in May. The arrests were made by soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division in a Saturday morning raid in Baghdad, according to a statement released Sunday. The three men, the statement said, were members of an Iran-backed network, the Special Groups militia, that engaged in kidnapping and smuggling weapons into Iraq.

The five British hostages have not been heard from, and their fate remains unclear.

Last week, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, a spokesman for the American military, told reporters that an Iranian man arrested by American forces in Iraqi Kurdistan on Sept. 20 was a “very senior member of the Quds Force” posing as a trade representative. General Bergner said the man, whom he identified as Mahmoud Farhadi, helped transport weapons across Iraq’s border.

Iran protested Mr. Farhadi’s arrest and, as retaliation four days later, closed several border crossings in Iraqi Kurdistan to commercial traffic.