The deadly US-Iranian contest in Iraq

TheJanuary 20 raid on the joint US-Iraqi security “coordination” center in Karbala was even more operationally complex and sophisticated, and therefore worrying for the US commanders in Iraq, than I had understood it to be when I blogged about it on January 22nd.
Today (Friday), AP’s Steven Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra wrote, and the US occupation force’s press office later confirmed, that instead of all five of the US army’s fatal casualties having been killed during the attack on the coordination center itself, only one of them was killed at that time, while the other four were captured from the center, driven away by the assailants, and discovered only later, with fatal gunshot wounds in their heads, at the point some 25 miles away to the east where all or some of the American-style SUV’s used in the assault were abandoned by the assailants, who got away undetected.
The sophistication and scale of the attack has left some people guessing that Iranian or pro-Iranian operatives were involved. If so, the operation may well have started out as an attempt to capture and hold some US soldiers “in response to” the US forces’ capture/arrest of five Iranian government employees in Arbil/Erbil, northern Iraq, on January 11.
If that was the plan, wouldn’t it have made more sense for the assailants to have kept the captured US soldiers alive? (And the question then would be: where? In a “liberated zone” within Iraq, or in Iran?) But anyway, something evidently caused the assailants not to proceed with such a plan, if indeed that had been their first option. What they apparently did succeed in doing was getting away safely from the place in Al-Mahawil District where they abandoned five of their black SUVs along with the bodies of three of the murdered soldiers and the soon-to-be-dead body of the fourth one.
Today, before I saw that AP story on this, I had read this article in the WaPo, which seems to give some relevant background to the whole story of the Arbil “arrests” and the Karbala assault. In it, Dafna Linzer writes,

The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

Linzer dates the decision to adopt the new, tougher policy to,

Last summer, [when] senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran’s regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing…

These officials described the previous policy used towards Iranian agents identified in Iraq as one of “catch and release”, which was, “designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries.”
She wrote:

Three officials said that about 150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq at any given time. There is no evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, intelligence officials said.
But, for three years, the Iranians have operated an embedding program there, offering operational training, intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite militias connected to the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the violence against Sunni factions…

However, she also writes this:

In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.

But the new, more confrontational policy has evidently sparked some serious disagreements within the administration.
Linzer wrote:

Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders. But if Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to put U.S. citizens and national interests at greater risk in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Officials [unidentified] said [CIA head Michael] Hayden counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq.

Aha! So now do we see a reason for the timing of some of these leaks to Dafna Linzer??? It certainly looks to me like people in Hayden’s camp– having seen what happened in Karbala last Saturday– were in effect saying to the hot-dogs within the administration: “Told you so!”
By the way, in case you’re interested in knowing which way Condi Rice swung on the hot-dog vs. the relative doves on this issue, Linzer’s reporting indicates clearly that Condi was sitting firmly on the fence there, while trying to keep her rear end well covered…
And if you read further down in her article you can discover some interesting background about the policy shift, including the fact that it was undertaken in connection with the Israel-Hizbullah war of last summer:

Officials said a group of senior Bush administration officials who regularly attend the highest-level counterterrorism meetings agreed that the conflict provided an opening to portray Iran as a nuclear-ambitious link between al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the death squads in Iraq.
Among those involved in the discussions, beginning in August, were deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, NSC counterterrorism adviser Juan Zarate, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, representatives from the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, and outgoing State Department counterterrorism chief Henry A. Crumpton.

Linzer quoted an un-named “senior counterterrorism official” as having told her in a recent interview that,

“Our goal is to change the dynamic with the Iranians, to change the way the Iranians perceive us and perceive themselves. They need to understand that they cannot be a party to endangering U.S. soldiers’ lives and American interests, as they have before. That is going to end.”
A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy.
“This has little to do with Iraq. It’s all about pushing Iran’s buttons. It is purely political,” the official said. The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States’ increasing inability to stanch the violence there.

Linzer also noted this:

In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the “SS.” They also referred to Guard members as “terrorists.” Such a formal designation could turn Iran’s military into a target of what Bush calls a “war on terror,” with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.

… Meanwhile, if you want to see the substance of the news release that the US military people in Iraq put out today about the Karbala incident, here it is:

At approximately 5 p.m., a convoy consisting of at least five sport utility vehicles entered the Karbala compound. The armed militants wore American-looking uniforms and carried U.S.-type weapons convincing Iraqi checkpoints to allow their passage.
Once inside the compound, an estimated nine to 12 armed militants engaged the American troops with rifle fire and hand grenades.
While defending the command post, one Soldier was killed and three others were wounded by a hand grenade thrown into the center’s main office which contains the provincial police chief’s office on an upper floor.
During the attack in the main building, Soldiers defending it reported hearing a series of explosions in the compound causing the Soldiers to seek cover. Three U.S. military Humvees were damaged from the explosions.
The attackers broke off the assault withdrawing from the compound with four captured U.S. Soldiers.
The insurgents then drove out of the Karbala province and into neighboring Babil province, encountering an Iraqi police checkpoint. The sport utility vehicles passed through the checkpoint, but the Iraqi police trailed the vehicles, suspicious of the group.
After proceeding further east and crossing the Euphrates River, the assailants drove north toward Hillah, abandoning five SUVs, U.S. Army-type combat uniforms, boots, radios and a non-U.S. made rifle.
Iraqi police in pursuit found the abandoned vehicles and equipment near the Iraqi town of Al Mahawil. [AP says this is about 25 miles from Karbala.]
Two Soldiers were found handcuffed together in the back of one of the SUVs. Both had suffered gunshot wounds and were dead. A third Soldier was found shot and dead on the ground. Nearby, the fourth Soldier was still alive, despite a gunshot wound to the head. The Iraqi police rushed the severely wounded Soldier to a nearby hospital, but the Soldier died enroute.
“The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution,” said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, spokesman for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
“The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, by-passing the Iraqi police in the compound,” said Bleichwehl. “We are looking at all the evidence to determine who or what was responsible for the breakdown in security at the compound and the perpetration of the assault.”

As I had noted earlier, the US military’s January 21 press release about the incident stated– as it turns out, quite incorrectly– that “Five U.S. Soldiers were killed and three wounded while repelling the attack.”