Timeline: Iran vs. the US in Iraq (Newly Updated 8-07)

John on March 26, 2007 at 11:37 pm

I’m assembling a timeline of events leading up to the kidnapping of 15 British sailors and marines based primarily on work done by FrontPage magazine, HotAir, Regime Change Iran and myself. Mistakes are likely mine.

It’s possible not all these events are relevant or that some that are relevant aren’t included. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments. I may continue adding info to the timeline as I assemble it (i.e. this may develop if I have time).

[Note: I've added a few things per Allahpundit's suggestion here.]

Pre-March 2003: (link) A Time magazine article published in August 2005 says an Iranian plan for gaining influence in Iraq began prior to the US invasion (March 20, 2003). The scope of this plan is said to “rival those of the U.S. and its allies…”

April 10, 2003: (link) Time Magazine gets a copy of a Revolutionary Guard intelligence report marked CONFIDENTIAL. It notes the passage of US forces through the city of Kut but says “we are in control of the city.”

Another report dated the same day says “forces attached to us had control of the city of Amarah and had occupied Baath Party properties.”

June 24, 2003: (link) Six British MPs are executed in Majarr al-Kabir. Iran is believed to have funded the operation.

August 2003: (link) First EFP (explosively formed projectile) attack in Iraq.

August 21, 2003: (link) In an interview in Al-Ahd al-Jadid, Haytham Suleiman, security patrols director for Al-Salihiyah, said that 12 Iranian intelligence agents were arrested at the offices of Al-Mashriq Money Exchange Company in Al-Salihiyah. The suspects were interrogated and it was determined that they intended to conduct bombings in Baghdad. The individuals reportedly possessed counterfeit $50 dollar bills.

June 24, 2004: (link) Iranian leader Ali Khamenei says in a TV interview:

We have no need for a nuclear bomb. We have overcome our enemies so far, without the nuclear bomb. The Iranian people have been defeating America for the past 25 years, is it not so? America has been defeated by the Iranian people during the past 25 years. What has it been defeated with? Have we defeated America using a nuclear bomb, or by our determination, will, faith, and awareness? The world of Islam has been mobilized against America for the past 25 years.

September 29, 2004: (link) A raid of three Iranian “safe houses” in Iraq yields documents linking Iran to plots to kill members of the Iraqi intelligence service.

October 14, 2004: (link) Iraqi intelligence chief Mohammed al-Shahwani goes public with the September raids, saying “Documents were obtained … (showing) the Iranian regime … is seeking to embroil some of the SCIRI members in subversive acts to exaccerbate Iraq’s wounds and dominate it.” He adds that “A document (showed) that Iran allocated a budget to Badr Corps, totalling 45 million dollars. ”

This is prompted by the killing 18 Iraqi intelligence agents, ten killed by the Badr organisation and the rest by Al-Qaeda-linked foreign militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. In addition to the millions for the Badr Corps, Shahwani believes Iran is funding Zarqawi, but can’t prove it.

December 2004: (link) The Washington Post reports that in an attempt to push the election of Iranian approved candidate for President Abdul Aziz Hakim, “the Iranian intelligence service has been pumping millions of dollars and hundreds of operatives into the country. The Iranians have also recruited assassination squads to kill potential Iraqi rivals, according to several Iraqi officials.”

Resistance to the Iranian influx was limited because “congressional insistence that the Iraqi elections be “democratic” has blocked any covert efforts to help America’s allies.”

The article ends on this prescient note: “Future historians will wonder how it happened that the United States came halfway around the world, suffered more than 1,200 dead and spent $200 billion to help install an Iraqi government whose key leaders were trained in Iran.”

January 26, 2005: (link) In an interview on Iranian TV, Hosein Salami, former deputy commander of operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps says:

The [Americans] eliminated the Taliban and Saddam. They conducted operations in Yugoslavia. Therefore, we are aware of the Americans’ real power. Our country has unique capacities that no other power in the Middle East or in the Persian Gulf possesses. This is the ability to manage regional crises. This is a fact. If Iran wishes to cause turbulence in the crisis areas around it, and to leave its mark – stability and security in the region will change dramatically.

March 26, 2005: (link) Khuzestan province (one of Iran’s 28 regions, which borders Southern Iraq) is reported to have become a “major base for terrorist attacks in Iraq.” Iranian agents who defected due to pay cuts are said to have revealed that the Revolutionary Guard is employing up to 40,000 agents inside Iraq.

May 29, 2005: (link) An EFP attack near Amara kills 21-year-old British lance corporal, Alan Brackenbury.

Early June 2005: (link) Literature professor Ala Al-Rumi is murdered on the campus of the University of Basra. Historian Jamhur Karim Chammas is kidnapped a short time later. Farm workers find his corpse under a highway overpass four days later, his body bearing the signs of severe torture. Both men had repeatedly spoken out against “Iran’s growing expansionism in Iraq.”

June 23, 2005: (link) A Japanese convoy near Samawa is struck by a roadside bomb which uses a remote control firing device typically provided by Iran or Hezbollah. The Japanese suspend all activity outside their camp until July 12.

July 19, 2005: (link) The United States secretly sends Iran a diplomatic protest through Swiss intermediaries charging that Tehran is supplying lethal roadside explosive devices (EFPs) to Shiite extremists in Iraq. “Message from the United States to the Government of Iran” — informed the Iranians of the May 29th attack on Cpl. Brackenbury and notes that the Shiite militants who planted the device had longstanding ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran.

August 18, 2005: (link) Time magazine obtains US intelligence documents which state that Iran is backing Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani and his network of “280 members, divided into 17 bomb making teams and death squads.” Sheibani is believed to be the main conduit of EFPs entering Iraq from Iran.

August 2005: (link) Iran denies any connection to the EFPs being used in Iraq.

August 22, 2005: (link) In a statement published in the German paper Der Spiegel Major General Hassan Sawadi Al-Saad, Basra’s chief of police, says of Iranian influence: “All I can say is that 80 percent of our police officers do not obey my commands.”

September 2005: (link) British forces arrest Ahmad Jawwad al-Fartusi, the leader of a splinter group of the Mahdi Army that carried out E.F.P. attacks against British forces in southern Iraq. American intelligence concludes that his fighters might have received training and E.F.P. components from Hezbollah.

October 2005: (link) British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, tells reporters in London that Iran is supplying lethal technology that had been used against British troops. Prime Minister Tony Blair adds, “The particular nature of those devices lead us to either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah.”

March 7, 2006: (link) Defense Secretary Rumsfeld publicly accuses Iran of sending Revolutionary Guard forces into Iraq, saying “They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq, and we know it, and it is something that they will look back on as having been an error in judgement.”

April 2006: (link) EFP attacks in Iraq rise sharply.

May 6, 2006: (link) A British Lynx helicopter is shot down over Basra, killing five. On 3/4/2007 an investigation into the incident concludes that the chopper was brought down by a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile known as an SA14 Strella, which was manufactured in Iran.(link)

September 7, 2006: (link) A joint border patrol made up of US and Iraqi soldiers is ambushed by a platoon of Iranian soldiers. Rounds exchanged. The US troops retreat and report the incident. The Iraqi troops they were patroling with remain unaccounted for.

(link) Time magazine reports that at least one Iranian soldier, who had been aiming a rocket at US forces, was killed in the incident.

October-December, 2006: (link) Excluding casualty data for the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, where the explosives have not been found, the devices (EFPs) account for about 30 percent of American and allied deaths this quarter of the year.

November 2, 2006: (link) Cpl. Daniel James –interpreter for Gen David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan — is charged with “prejudicing the safety of the state” by passing information “calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy”. It was said he had communicated with a “foreign power” in the incident on Nov 2, believed to be Iran.

November 12, 2006: (link) In a TV interview on Iran’s channel 2, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, General Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps says:

The Americans have many weaknesses. In fact, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they clearly displayed their strengths and weaknesses. We have planned our strategy precisely on the basis of their strengths and weaknesses.

[...]

We don’t see any motivation among the American forces in Iraq. They are very cowardly. There are even scenes from Iraq in which they are seen crying. When their commanders encounter a problem, they burst into tears. We did not see such spectacles in the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war. I can therefore say that our advantage over the foreign forces is moral and human.

November 15, 2006: (link) The Telegraph reports on links between Al-Quaeda and Iran’s Revolutinary Guard:

“From the evidence we have seen, Iran’s links to al-Qa’eda go far deeper than simply supplying them with equipment,” said a senior Western intelligence official. “They are allowing them the use of training facilities so that they can ensure their attacks are as effective as possible.”

November 27, 2006: (link) In an interview on Iranian TV, President Ahmedinejad says:

Today is the day of unity among peoples and of solidarity among governments. We should join hands and help the people of Iraq, and help Palestine, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Today, by helping one another, we can drive the foreigners out of our region.

December 9, 2006: (link) Iran really wants peace, says Time magazine:

“TIME’s sources, in contrast to U.S. charges that Tehran is fueling instability there…indicate that Iranian officials essentially agree with the Baker-Hamilton conclusion that while Iran gains an advantage from having the U.S. mired in Iraq, its long-term interests are not served by Iraqi chaos and territorial disintegration.”

December 20, 2006: (link) The US announces that it is moving a second carrier group to the Gulf “in a display of military resolve toward Iran.”

December 21, 2006: (link) On a tip, US forces raid the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shia leader, and arrest two senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force: Col. Abu Amad Davari (link) and Brig. Gen. Amir Mohsen Shirazi (link) (other reports call him Moshin Chizari or simply Chizari). Chizari is the #3 commander of the Revolutionary Guard (link). (Note that the only story to give the exact date is this one from ABC)

According to the Washington Post, Chizari has on him (link):

detailed weapons lists, documents pertaining to shipments of weapons into Iraq, organizational charts, telephone records and maps, among other sensitive intelligence information. Officials were particularly concerned by the fact that the Iranians had information about importing modern, specially shaped explosive charges into Iraq, weapons that have been used in roadside bombs to target U.S. military armored vehicles.

Michael Ledeen’s summarized the find this way (link):

He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted.

Ledeen goes on to say that the information had (by Jan 2 when his post was published) reached the President.

Late December 2006: (link) After the President “was given new intelligence on the scale of Iranian operations to foment violence in Iraq” he signed a “clandestine directive” ordering “US forces to launch a military offensive against Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guards…in Iraq”

December 29, 2006: (link) Against the wishes of the US, the two captured Iranians are returned to Iran by al-Maliki’s Iraqi government.

January 10, 2007: (link) President Bush addresses the nation saying, in part:

Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

January 11, 2007: A US led raid on a consular office in Irbil, Iraq leads to the capture of six Iranians including (link):

1. Hassan Abbassi, a strategist “close to” President Ahmedinejad and the only individual with any diplomatic credentials.
2. Mohammad Jaafari, an aid to National Security advisor Ali Larijani
3. Jalal Sharifi, a professional intelligence officer.
4. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Djafari Sahraroudi, a Kurdish affairs expert wanted by Interpol
5. Mojhadi
6. Safderi, two Revolutionary Guard officers (link).

One of the six, (Hassan?) is released. The other five remain in custody.

Mid-January, 2007: (link) Immediately after the capture of the Irbil six, “Ayatollah Khamenei hastily convened a national security damage control committee to devise new strategies for reducing Iran’s footprint in Iraq. It was staffed almost exclusively with top Rev. Guards officers, including the head of IRGC intelligence, Maj. Gen. Morteza Rezai, and former deputy IRGC commander, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqr Zolqadr.”

January 17, 2007: (link) “Iraqi intelligence sources disclosed to The Daily Telegraph that Iran plans to reap the huge financial rewards presented by the southern oil fields and prevent Western businesses from gaining a foothold inside Basra.”

January 19, 2007: (link) The Brits are skeptical: “As for the anxious U.S. warnings of Iranian support for the insurgency in Iraq, a British officer was not so sure. “We have no hard evidence that the Iranians are directly involved in the attacks against coalition forces here. We have some suspicions, but so far we have found no direct proof,” the officer said.”

January 20, 2007: (link) A team of twelve men disguised as U.S. soldiers entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, where U.S. soldiers conducted a meeting with local officials, and kidnaps five US soldiers. They are later killed. Within a week, investigators have a suspect “this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps.”

January 26, 2007: (link) CBS News:

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have been catching Iranian agents, interviewing them and letting them go. A report in Friday’s Washington Post says the administration is now convinced that was ineffective because Iran paid no penalty for its mischief.

As one senior administration official told the Post, “There were no costs for the Iranians. They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.”

Janurary 30, 2007: (link) In an interview with USA Today, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno says, “We have weapons that we know through serial numbers … that trace back to Iran”

January 31, 2007: (link) Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Wednesday “We will not accept Iran to use Iraq to attack the American forces, but does this not exist? It exists, and I assure you it exists.” Also: “We have told the Iranians and the Americans, ‘We know that you have a problem with each other, but we are asking you, please solve your problems outside Iraq,”

(link) Half as many US deaths caused by EFPs imported from Iran as in December.

February 1, 2007: (link) The NY Times editorial desk says the US must stop “bullying “Iran:

Mr. Bush’s…disastrous war in Iraq has done so much damage to America’s credibility…that it no longer frightens America’s enemies. The only ones really frightened are Americans and America’s friends.

February 6, 2007: (link) Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad is kidnapped by 30 gunmen wearing the uniforms of a special Iraqi army unit that often works with United States military forces in Iraq. The next day, Iran’s ambassador to Bagdad accused the US of being behind the abduction (link).

February 7, 2007: (link via HotAir) Gen. Alireza Asgari disappears from his hotel room in Istanbul, Turkey. He is believed to have defected to the US.

February 8, 2007: (link via HotAir) Gen. Soltani — said to have intimate knowledge of foreign intelligence operations — travels to Bandar Abbas and then disappears.

According to the Frontpage article, “the generals revealed the names of nearly a dozen top Iraqi politicians who were on the payroll of the Iranian government.”

February 9, 2007: (link) Javad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, says in an interview with NPR:

“Iran has no interest in providing weapons to any insurgents groups in Iraq,” he says. “But the problem is that the United States has decided on a policy and is trying to find or fabricate evidence if it cannot find one – and I believe it hasn’t been able to find an evidence – in order to substantiate and corroborate that policy.”

February 11, 2007: (link) At an intelligence briefing in Bagdad, the Pentagon puts on display weapons captured in Iraq with Iranian markings. The main culprit is a type of bomb called an EFP or “explosively formed penetrator.” They pentagon estimates the damage caused by such weapons as “more than 170 Americans killed in action and more than 600 wounded” The power point slides used in the presentation are available here.

That Night In Iran: (link) The office of former reformist president Khatami is raided and all computers, files and fax machines are taken. Only a couple of small, independent papers mention the raid.

February 12, 2007: (link) A cache of more than 100 fifty-calibre sniper rifles manufactured in Austria and sold legally to Iran is discovered in Iraq. The rifles cost nearly $20,000 each.

February 14, 2007: (link) At a White House news conference, President Bush identifies the Quds Force, an offshoot of the Iranian Republican Guard as the suppliers of weapons being used against US troops in Iraq.

February 21, 2007: (link) On March 14 London-based Arabic language newspaper A-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Iran has not heard from high ranking Qods Force officer Mohammed Muhsayin Shiradi in three weeks (making the date of his disappearance around 2/21).

Early February: (link) Fox News reports: “Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has fled his Baghdad stronghold for the friendly confines of Iran’s capital…within the past few weeks out of fear for his safety and security.”

And take this one with a grain of salt, but a report from a Kurdish news site claims to have uncovered a letter from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warning Muqtada al-Sadr to keep his Iranian connections under wraps. Oddly, the Kurdish site is down but a reference to the report including an image of the letter can be found here.

March 9, 2007: (link) US General Mixon, commander of Multinational Division-North and the 25th Infantry Brigade in Iraq, seizes a large cache of Iranian made weapons and says “I’ve got momentum and want to press forward.” Gen. Mixon is responsible for the area of Eastern Iraq known as Diyala.

March 15, 2007 (link) An EFP attack in in eastern Baghdad kills four American service members and wounded two others.

March 18, 2007: (link) In an article in Subhi Sadek, the Revolutionary Guard’s weekly paper, Reza Faker, a writer believed to have close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned that Iran would strike back.

“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,” he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.”

The same day: (link) Jerusalem Post reports that a senior Iranian military official said Saturday that the decision to capture the soldiers was made during a March 18 emergency meeting of the High Council for Security following a report by the Al-Quds contingent commander, Kassem Suleimani, to the Iranian chief of the armed forces, Maj.Gen. Hassan Firouz Abadi. In the report, according to Asharq al-Awsat, Suleimani warned Abadi that Al Quds and Revolutionary Guards’ operations had become transparent to US and British intelligence following the arrest of a senior Al Quds officer and four of his deputies in Irbil.

March 20, 2007: (link) Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese man whose real name is Hamid Mohammed Jabur al-Lami is captured in Iraq’s southern city of Basra. He is a senior figure in Hezbollah who is sent by the Quds Force to train insurgents in Iraq. His capture is kept secret until a press conference on July 7, 2007.

March 21, 2007: (link) Addressing a crowd chanting “Death to America, Death to England, Death to Israel”, Iranian Leader, Ali Khamenei says:

Pay attention. If they want to use threats, impose [their will], and act aggressively, they should have no doubt that the Iranian people and officials will confront the enemies that want to attack us, and will strike at them with all our capabilities.

The address is broadcast on Iranian TV.

(link via HotAir) The Associated Press reports:

“the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran.” Furthermore, “hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.”

March 22, 2007: (link) The Khazali brothers — former ranking members of al-Sadr’s Shia movement — are arrested by US forces near Basra. The brothers are believed responsible for the Karbala raid on January 20, 2007. Mehdi Army commanders claim that the Khazalis had split with al-Sadr and lead 3,000 fighters with financing from Iran.

March 23, 2007: (link) Lt Col Justin Maciejewski tells the BBC that while he had no “smoking gun” to prove Iranian interference in Basra, local community leaders informed him that Iranian agents were paying local men 500 US dollars a month to carry out attacks and providing them with sophisticated modern weapons.

Later the same day: (link) Fifteen British Navy personnel taken at gunpoint by Iranian forces off the coast of Iraq.

March 25, 2007: (link) The Sunday Mirror reports:

According to Western intelligence sources, intercepted radio communications show Tehran has been panicking over key operatives being picked up by Coalition forces in Iraq.

An Israeli source told The Sunday Mirror that Iranian undercover units in Iraq have been ordered to mount hostage-taking operations against Coalition forces in retaliation.

Later the same day: (link) The U.N. Security Council unanimously approves new arms and financial sanctions against Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

April 11, 2007 (link) Coalition forces track a convoy of trucks from Iran to Afghanistan. They are found to contain hundreds of pounds of C4 and RPGs destined for the Taliban. “These clearly have the hallmarks of the Iranian Revolution Guards’ Quds force.”

April 26, 2007: (link) General Petraeus gives a briefing in Washington at which he highlights the support Iran is giving insurgents withing Iraq. He says that the US has detained “an individual named Sheibani, who is one of the heads of the Sheibani network.” There is no mention of the capture of Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani in any published press reports, but he was the reported head of an Iranian insurgency operation bringing EFPs into Iraq back in 2005.

April 27, 2007: (link) US forces detain four members of a gang suspected of smuggling armour-piercing bombs from Iran to Iraq and sending back militants for “terrorist training.”

May 3, 2007: (link) A second convoy carrying explosives from Iran to Taliban forces in Afghanistan is intercepted.

July 02, 2007: (link) At a press briefing the US announces the capture of Ali Musa Daqduq back in March and formally ties Iran to the Karbala attack in January. From the NY Times:

“Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity,” he said. When he was asked if Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, General Bergner said “that would be hard to imagine.”

July 24, 2007: (link) The US holds informal talks with Iran about the security situation in Iraq. On the first day “arguments erupted when he [the US envoy] accused Iran of providing direct support to extremist militias — both training and actual weapons — and that Washington had “the proof.”

August 07, 2007: (link)  Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq tells the NY Times that EFP attacks traceable to Iran have gone up substantially since May.

“I think it is because the Iranians are surging support to the special groups,” he said, referring to the American name for Iranian-backed cells here. “Over the last three to four months, it has picked up in terms of equipment, training and dollars. I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September,” he added.

[End Timeline]

Post Addendum 3/28: This post has now received more visits than any other post on the blog, thanks to HotAir, Instapundit, Wizbang and Hugh Hewitt who mentioned it on the air. That convinced me it was time to push the story. So tonight I sent a fellow blogger a link to this post and respectfully asked for his opinion:

If President Ahmedinejad responds, I’ll post it. (And if the site goes down, you’ll know why.)

Category: Foreign Affairs |