Iran's Khatami Accuses Iran Of Terrorism In Iraq, Time Magazine Disagrees

Here is an insane juxtaposition of two news articles. The first records Iran's ex-President, Ayatollah Khatami, accusing Iran's current theocratic government of supporting terrorism abroad, including in Iraq. The second is a Time Magazine article which accuses our military and government of lying about Iran's proxy war inside of Iraq.

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This from AFP on the remarks of former Iranian President Ayatollah Khatami given in a speech the other day:

Ex-president Mohmamad Khatami was under fire from hardliners on Monday after comments interpreted as accusing Iran's clerical leaders of supporting insurgents in the Middle East.

The hardline Kayhan newspaper accused the reformist Khatami of tarnishing the Islamic republic's reputation by implying it was carrying out "sabotage" work in other countries through insurgent groups.

In his speech, Khatami referred to the ambition of Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to export the 1979 Islamic revolution around the world, but expressed fear this wish was being distorted.

"What did the imam (Khomeini) mean by exporting the revolution?" he asked in the speech Friday to university students in the northern province of Gilan, according to the Kargozaran newspaper.

"Did he mean that we take up arms, that we blow up places in other nations and we create groups to carry out sabotage in other countries? The imam was vehemently against this and was confronting it," he added.

His speech has been seen by some observers as accusing the Iranian authorities of encouraging militants to destabilize the Middle East, in particular Iraq and Lebanon. . . .

Read the entire article. Meanwhile, Time Magazine has published an article by their reporters Mark Kukis and Abigail Hauslohner claiming that Iraq's government does not believe that Iran is conducting a proxy war inside of Iraq and that there is "good reason" to dispute American claims to the contrary:

American circles in Baghdad and Washington are probably not pleased with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plan for a special panel to investigate allegations of Iranian interference in Iraq. Many U.S. officials are already convinced of the worst and, for years, U.S. officials have now aired accusations against Iran, insisting that Tehran is stoking Iraq's violence by keeping up a flow of money, weapons and trained fighters into the country. The Iraqi government, however, remains unconvinced — with good reason.

. . . [T]he U.S. allegations appear to be based on speculation, spurred by the appearance about a year ago of a new breed of roadside bomb in Iraq. Explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, . . . Accusations that Iran was shipping the things into Iraq grew louder as U.S. casualties from the weapon rose. But no concrete evidence has emerged in public that Iran was behind the weapons. U.S. officials have revealed no captured shipments of such devices and offered no other proof.

Instead, the Americans argued their case publicly with deductive reasoning: the copper slugs used in EFPs had to be precisely tooled with a heavy press in order to work properly, they said; no such heavy presses were in operation in Iraq, according to the Americans, therefore the slugs had to have been machined in Iran and moved into Iraq. It is, however, not impossible that such heavy presses may well be operating in Iraq. Three major cities in southern Iraq (Basra, Karbala and Najaf) have gone without a significant U.S. military presence for more than a year. These cities, which U.S. officials believe form hubs for the flow of arms into Baghdad, may indeed have such presses.

I have to interject here. This argument is a year old and the issue now extends far beyond EFP's. Time is ignoring the mountain of evidence since this first became an issue. Iranian arms and munitions are being found in huge caches throughout Iraq. Those caches include EFP's. This is a ludicrous strawman argument Time is positing.

To continue with Time's far left screed:

The U.S. has also alleged that Tehran was passing rockets to militia elements in Iraq for use against American troops and, lately, the Iraqi government living under American protection in the Green Zone. Recovered materials from some of the rockets reveal Iranian markings, American officials have said, without however producing convincing physical evidence.

Update: Perhaps if Time bothered to read the news in Iraq, they might know that the Iraqis seemed to think those rockets are Iranian also. This from Iraq the Model, based on newspaper reports in the two largest Iraqi papers:

The Iraqi minister of defense pushed the debate with the Iranians over their provision of weapons to Shia militias one more step on Monday. Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi indirectly confronted the Iranians, without naming them, with new findings that prove their involvement in the arming of Shia militias.

On Monday, state-owned al-Sabah published a statement by the minister in which he spoke of the capture of a certain type of rocket that was never found in militia-held caches until now:

Defense minister Abdul Qadir Mohammed Obeidi revealed that army troops found a 200-mm ground-to-ground rocket manufactured in 2007 during a search operation by the troops north of Basra. Obeidi told al-Sabah in an exclusive interview that, under international laws and norms, this kind of rocket can be traded only with the approval of parliaments and is used only at times of extreme necessity during wars … and wondered how this rocket entered the country. Obeidi added that this rocket can be launched only from a special platform and by specialized crews.

From what I read in Iraq’s two biggest newspapers, it seems that the government is trying to step up the rhetoric against Iranian interference in Iraq and to induce uproar among the Iraqi public. Azzaman had the following information about the found rocket, provided by “intelligence officials“:

The rocket was manufactured in 2007 in Iran and is called Falaq-1. Falaq-1 is a strategic missile of immense destruction power and was used by Hezbollah against Israel in the July 2006 war. . . .

Read the entire post. The Times obviously isin't allowing the facts to interfere with their narrative. Back to their far left screed:

The third leg in the U.S. argument against Iran is the longstanding assertion that the Qods Force, a paramilitary wing of the Iranian army, trains Iraqi militants inside Iran and then supports their guerrilla activity back in Iraq. The U.S. military has offered its most convincing public argument on this point, revealing details in July 2007 of the interrogation of an alleged Hizballah operative captured in Basra. TIME also interviewed two Iraqi guerilla fighters who said they trained in Iran.

Taken altogether, the U.S. evidence offered publicly about Iran's supposedly nefarious activities in Iraq is far from a slam-dunk case, . . .

Read the entire article. Clearly the case is not a slam-dunk to our agenda driven MSM, who seem disposed to see only the facts that support their suicidal narrative. To Iraqis and Iran's ex-president, it obviously does not seem too mystifying an issue. Nor does it seem to have Iraq's military commander in Karbala confused. He had this to say a few days ago after the discovery of a massive Iranian weapons cache:

Karbala operations commander said on Saturday that Iranian intervention is disturbing the city's security.

He noted that huge quantities of Iranian made weapons were seized throughout different locations in the province.

"There is Iranian intervention, and an Iranian 'touch' in Karbala," Major General Ra'id Shaker Jawdat said in a press conference at Karbala operations command's building, after showing a large quantity of Iranian-made weapons.

"This touch is attributed to the presence of Iranian made weapons, especially roadside bombs," Jawdat said.

"Those weapons entered Karbala to destabilize security, but accurate intelligence tips enabled us to reach the weapons and confiscate them, in different places of the province," he added. . . .

Somehow, that report has not made it into the MSM, nor Time Magazine's report. And that, of course, is only one of a mountain of reports and evidence that Time is ignoring.

Our far left, and particularly those in the MSM, are completely out of touch with reality, either deliberately or simply because they are so predisposed to a hatred of our country that they are blinded to any reality which disturbs their paradigm. Interesting, is it not, that while an Iranian former President speaks the truth about those governing his country, it is our MSM that is running cover for the same vile theocracy that poses an existential threat. Khatami will no doubt pay a stiff price for his honesty. Time's reporters may win a prize for their dishonesty. As I said, its an insane juxtaposition.