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A mechanized force estimated at between two and three thousand Iranian Revolutionary Guards combat troops thrust into Northern Iraq Friday evening, July 26, in a search and destroy mission against Iranian Kurdish dissidents.
Some two hundred Iranian military vehicles, including light armored vehicles, troops transports, trucks, artillery, and rocket launchers were seen crossing over from Iran at Marivan-Penjuin and moving toward the Iraqi Kurdish town of Sulaymaniah, Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish sources reported.
The attack force initially moved toward bases controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), which has used Iraq as a safe haven for armed attacks against Iranian military targets in the past. KDPI sources say they had been warned of the impending attacks for several weeks, but that the Sulaymaniah bases remained vulnerable.
After receiving an escort from Iraqi Kurds loyal to Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Rev. Guards assault force launched a full scale assault against Iranian Kurdish refugee camps and military bases on Saturday morning, using katyusha rocket launchers and artillery. Part of the Iranian assault force moved 60 kilometers further westward inside Iraq toward the main headquarters of the KDPI at Koy-Sandjak. The KDPI was believed to have more troops at Koy than the attackers.
"We have faced this type of attack before," a KDPI spokesman in Washington said, "and have always managed to repulse them."
The Sulaymaniah region in northern Iraq is controlled by the Iraqi Kurds loyal to PUK leader Jalal Talabani. In the past, Talabani has been friendly toward the KDPI, but over the past 18 months he has moved increasingly closer to Tehran because of his ongoing battle with rival Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. "Our real concern is that this attack could lead to a deterioration of our relations with the PUK," the KDPI spokesman said.
The U.S. State Department was informed of the cross-border attack as it was occurring, and said it was "monitoring" the situation. However, the U.S. was "not fueling the jets" for any form of military response, officials said on Monday morning.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party and fierce rival to Talabani, issued a statement on July 28 calling Talabani's support for the Rev. Guards operation "tantamount to a disgraceful national betrayal." The statement claimed the PUK "led the Iranian force through 200 km's of territory away from the Iranian border and guided them to attack the Iranian Kurdish refugees." However, when the Rev. Guards troops attacking Koy-Sanjak withdrew, they were escorted by KDP forces.
For its part, the PUK has acknowledged its acquiescence to the Iranian incursion, saying its forces were powerless to prevent it. Tehran closed the border between Iran and the PUK-controlled areas on July 1 in response to armed incursions by the KDPI in June, and had been pressuring the PUK to "secure" the region to prevent further incursions by KDPI guerrillas.
Tehran claimed on Monday that its troops had killed some 20 "counter-revolutionaries and bandits" during the cross-border attack. Privately, Iranian officials have been presenting their action as comparable to Turkey's "hot pursuit" of PKK rebels across borders into Iraq and Iran.
Several thousand Iranian Kurdish refugees living in the areas of the fighting were displaced, UNHCR sources reported, while several hundred homes were destroyed by the Rev. Guards artillery. [Iranfax 7/27; IRNA 7/29]
Iran dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Alaeddin Boroujerdi to Turkey on July 19, on a mission intended to calm tempers over allegations of cross-border skirmishes between the two countries.
After the talks, Turkey's new Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan was reassuring. "We can sort things out through political will."
Two days earlier, President Soleyman Demirel expressed concern over attacks by PKK guerrillas on Turkish positions from across the border in Iran, and warned neighboring states not to provide safe haven to terrorists. Five Turkish soldiers had been killed during such an attack the week before, after a serious of such incidents in June. Turkey's helicopter attack on an Iranian village on June 26 is now being painted as a case of "hot pursuit" against PKK guerrillas. [Reuter, 7/19]
Several thousand Iranian Kurds who have taken refuge inside Iraq have submitted a petition to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad to go home, according to reports from Baghdad. The Kurds had previously sought resettlement in other countries, but were said to have given up hope of success.
An estimated 23,000 Iranian Kurds are living in the al-Tash refugee camp, 100 miles west of Baghdad, under the supervision of the UNHCR. Another 6,000 Iranian Kurdish refugees are living in northern Iraq. [Reuter 7/25]
The Law Enforcement Forces have arrested members of six gangs specialized in armed robbery, who had been plundering private houses in the city of Karaj. According to Jomhouri-e Eslami, the gangs forced entry into private homes and stole valuable carpets, cameras, VCRs, and automobiles. [Jomhouri-e Eslami 7/20]
In a separate incident, two "drug smugglers" were killed and seven others arrested in the province of Khorassan last week.. The killings and drug seizures were part of the "Fajr-3" operation launched on the occasion of Law Enforcement Week in the cities of Torbat-e Jam, Taibad, and Khowaf, IRNA reported. The authorities also seized semi-automatic machine guns and RPG-7 anti-tank rockets from the alleged drug-smugglers. [IRNA, 7/24]
To read the official press, one would conclude Iran is in a state of insurrection, with heavily-armed drug dealers battling police in border provinces in the east and west of the country. By an odd coincidence, many of the areas where these skirmishes take place also happen to be the focus of armed opposition activity.
Last week Interior Minister Ali Mohammad Besharati said that Iran now plans to build a special prison for narcotics offenders, to keep them sealed off from society. As we have reported in previous Newswires, Iran has boasted of having executed more than 4,000 drug traffickers since 1989 and recently claimed there are more than 12,500 foreign drug smugglers in the Iranian jails. [Jomhouri-e Eslami, 7/24].
Although the Islamic Republic did not wait for the new "Islamic code" to go into effect to execute persons accused of serious crimes, they have announced since the Code became law on July 10 that cruel and unusual punishments, including execution, dismemberment, and whipping, will be stepped up.
Three men were hanged at dawn in Tehran's Qasr prison on July 21 on murder charges, Iran Daily reported. The three were identified as Ali Naqie, 41, Mohammad Golabi, 33 and Akbar Esmaili, 28. They were said to have committed separate crimes. [Iran Daily 7/22].
Ettelaat reported on Thursday that a court had handed down no fewer than five death sentences against a single person, identified as Mirza Qoli, for having burned a wife to death after she refused to allow him to take a third wife [7/24]
Four other persons were condemned to death, also on Thursday, for drug trafficking, murder, and for "having engaged in armed clashes with police," Kayhan reported. [7/24].
Under the new laws, a thief would lose four fingers of his right hand for a first offense, and his toes for a second theft. A third time would result in life imprisonment, according to Prosecutor-General Morteza Moqtadaie. Anyone convicted of usury would get 74 lashes and go to jail for up to three years, he added. Rape and adultery are punishable by death.
Significantly, in his explanation of the new punishments, Moqtadaie asserted that the laws were intended to "fully guarantee the security of the country." [Jomhouri-e Eslami, 7/24]
An Islamic revolutionary court last week sentenced to death three men for espionage and economic sabotage during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and ordered deadly lashings for three others, Tehran radio reported.
Hedayatollah Zendehdel, a Jewish businessman who converted to Islam, was condemned to death for economic fraud and for passing classified military information to "enemies."
The court also sentenced to death former air force officer Abdolreza Yazdanshenas and businessman Abolqassem Majd-Abkahi on similar charges and ordered the three to receive 170 lashes before execution.
When the three first went on trial in January they were accused of having contacts with Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency, and of establishing major network set up during the war to defraud state banks and sabotage the economy.
Two others received potentially mortal sentences for related activities. Former royal guards member Ali Sadafiyan was condemned to 23 years in prison and 200 lashes, while television actor Fereidoun Abuzia received a sentence of 10 years and 110 lashes. Abdolghafour Sartipi, a businessman charged with using his ties to Iran's former royal family for fraud, was jailed for seven years, the radio added.
The six men were charged at their trial with setting up several companies as fronts for their operations which included defrauding banks of large sums, bribing officials with money or women and helping people leave Iran illegally. [Tehran Radio 7/23; Reuter 7/23]
Iran's Supreme Court has approved the death penalty for an Iranian journalist named Kourosh Nikakhtar, after a revolutionary court convicted him for a 1994 assassination attempt against President Rafsanjani.
Nikakhtar was arrested after he allegedly fired several shots from a distance of around 60 meters in Rafsanjani's direction while the Islamic Republic president was addressing a rally at Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum shrine.
The authorities arrested 20 other persons in what they alleged was a plot to assassinate Rafsanjani and other Iranian leaders. The head of the Tehran Islamic revolutionary court, Gholamhossein Rahbarpour, said the court had passed a three-year jail sentence against Mohsen Salsali for involvement in the plot, and had condemned to death a second man, Mohammad Mousavinia. The second death sentence was still under review.
The authorities blamed the plot on leftist opposition groups and foreign powers including Israel and the United States, Kayhan reported. [Kayhan, IRNA, 7/23]
The People's Mujahidin have claimed that a member of their organization identified as Merhdad Kalani, aged 35, was executed on June 22 in Tehran's Evin prison. The group said it had received a letter from Kalani in March that had been smuggled out of his prison, saying he had been condemned to death in a secret trial lasting 20 minutes. In the letter, Kalani reportedly named 11 other political prisoners who he said had been secretly executed in the prison, a statement from the Mujahidin's umbrella organization said. [Iran Zamin, 7/22]
The Mujahidin have also claimed that an Iranian sympathizer, Peyman Salehi, was arrested upon his arrival at Tehran's Mehrebad airport on July 19, despite his attempt to seek political asylum in Holland. A Dutch court had acquiesced to a request from the Iranian authorities to extradite Salehi to Iran, apparently on criminal charges. [Iran Zamin 7/21]
40,000 troops from the Basij and Rev. Guards began maneuvers inside the city limits of Tabriz on July 25, as part of a nation-wide anti-riot control training program. The two-phase maneuver was intended to enhance the combat readiness of the participating forces, IRNA quoted a commander of the 31st Ashura Mechanized division as saying. The Chinese news agency quoted "observers" in Tehran as speculating the war games might be used to heighten Iran's military alert to a "potential military threat" from the Israeli air Force, following the Israeli-Turkish security pact.
A German weekly has published a report, based it claims on a classified assessment by the German Federal Intelligence Agency, BND, warning that the Islamic Republic may engage in "nuclear terrorism." The BND assessment details Iranian efforts to purchase nuclear materials on the black market, as well as dual-use equipment from Germany companies, and warns of the extent and "professionalism" of the international black market in stolen nuclear materials. (There is) scarcely a doubt remaining that Iran is interested in buying nuclear materials," the magazine said, quoting the BND report. "(Tehran) is interested with utmost certainty in fissionable material on the black market."
The BND had been aware of 169 cases of purchases of nuclear materials on the black market last year. In 1994 it had been aware of 124, Focus said. [Focus, 7/22]
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director (exec@iran.org). FDI materials, including this Newswire, are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.