TEHRAN - The Intelligence Ministry on Saturday released details of the detection and dismantling of a terrorist network affiliated to the United States.
In a coordinated operation on May 7, Iranian intelligence agents arrested the terrorist network’s members, who were identified in Fars, Khuzestan, Gilan, West Azerbaijan, and Tehran provinces, the Intelligence Ministry announcement said.
The group’s plans were devised in the U.S., according to the announcement, which added that they had planned to carry out a number of acts such as bombing scientific, educational, and religious centers, shooting people, and making public places in various cities insecure.
One of the terrorists was killed in the operation, but the rest are in detention, the Intelligence Ministry said, adding that the group’s main objective was to create fear among the people.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency comprehensively supported the terrorist group by arming it, training its members, and sponsoring its inhumane activities in Iran, the Intelligence Ministry stated.
The terrorists had maps, films, pictures, and sketches of important and sensitive sites in various cities in their possession when they were arrested.
They also had a large number of weapons and ammunition and a great deal of highly explosive chemicals and cyanide.
Thirteen people were killed and over 190 others wounded in a bombing carried out on April 12 at the Rahpuyan-e Vessal religious center, which is part of the Seyyed-ul-Shohada Mosque complex, located in a residential area of Shiraz.
Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.
Having done so, you will surely recognize that Americans are reluctant to go to war unless attacked. Until Pearl Harbor, we were even reluctant to get involved in World War II. For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.
Given the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, you are obviously thinking the rules have changed. Provocation is no longer required to take America to war. But even in this instance, we were led to believe that the mass murderer of American civilians, Osama bin Laden, was lurking, literally or figuratively, in the vicinity of Baghdad.
Given all this, you would probably be well advised to keep your forces, including clandestine forces, as far away from the Iraqi border as you can. You might even consider bringing in some neighbors to verify that you are not shipping arms next door. Tone down the rhetoric on Zionism. You've established your credentials with those in your world who thrive on that.
If it makes you feel powerful to hurl accusations at the American eagle, have at it. Sticks and stones, etc. But, for the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so.
For the vast majority of Americans who seek no wider war, in the Middle East or elsewhere, don't tempt fate. Don't give a certain vice president we know the justification he is seeking to attack your country. That is unless you happen to like having bombs fall on your head.
Gareth Porter, Investigative historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. His latest book is called "Perils of Dominance- Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam." The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its "provocation" in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels in the Strait might have been blown out of proportion. JUAN GONZALEZ- And, Gareth Porter, there have been some reports about the apparent splicing of audio onto the actual video that appear to be from two different sources. Could you talk about that?
GARETH PORTER- Well, that's right. I mean, we don't yet know exactly what the sequence of events was in this incident. We don't know exactly when the voices that we hear making what appear to be a threat to the American ships, where—when that occurred in the sequence of events in this incident. And it seems very possible that indeed the Pentagon did splice into the recording, the audio recording of the incident, the two bits of messages from a mysterious voice in a way that made it appear to occur in response to the initial communication from the US ship to the Iranian boats. And it seems very possible that, in fact, those voices came at some other point during this twenty-minute incident.
So this is something that really deserves to be scrutinized and, in fact, investigated by Congress, because of the significance, in the larger sense, of a potential major fabrication of evidence in order to make a political point by the Bush administration.
as far as we can tell from all the evidence so far, was turned into what was presented as a confrontation and a threat of war.
JUAN GONZALEZ0- Gareth Porter, I'd like to ask you, I was watching the Republican debate last night on Fox News and was astonished to see one of the moderators spend quite a bit of time on this topic, questioning every one of the candidates as to whether they believe the Navy commander on the scene did the right thing by not blowing the Iranian boats out of the water. Surprisingly, only Ron Paul, the maverick, even questioned some of the facts of the incident as reported. Your response to this suddenly becoming a topic for the presidential debates? AMY GOODMAN- Gareth Porter, this also comes right at the time that new documents have—newly declassified documents have revealed that the Johnson administration faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the war in Vietnam, to provide a pretext for increased bombing and increased troops there.
GARETH PORTER- Well, you know, this is an incident—the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the policy shenanigans surrounding it are something that I wrote about in my book, Perils of Dominance, about the US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. And what actually happened regarding the Gulf of Tonkin was that the ships, because of anxiety on the part of the crew of these ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, they thought they were under fire originally. They sent back messages saying that.
But within a matter of a couple of hours, the commander of the flotilla had decided that they had been mistaken, and he passed that message on to the Pentagon, and the Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was informed by early afternoon on the same day. And it is my interpretation, based on the evidence, that he failed—he refused to inform President Johnson of that fact, and that's why Johnson went ahead with a decision to bomb North Vietnam, which had already been made at noontime.
JUAN GONZALEZ- I'd like to ask you, going back to the incident also, one of the key contradictions now that have surfaced between the initial reports and certainly after the Iranian release of their own video is that initially the public was told that these were Revolutionary Guard boats, and now the Iranian government has said no, that they were actually boats of the Iranian Navy, and they clearly identified themselves as such
