IRAN: Secret War

ABC News: The Secret War Against Iran

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.

IRAN: Crisis

India Enews: US to attack Iran by end of April: report

The US is planning to attack Iran's nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities by the end of this month, the Kuwait-based Arab Times newspaper reported Wednesday.

Citing anonymous sources in Washington, it said that various White House departments had started preparing the political speech to be delivered by the US president later this month, announcing the military attack on Iran.

The speech will provide the 'evidence' and the 'justification' for the US to resort to the military option after failing to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions, said the report.

IRAN: Sailors Freed

Reuters: Britons head for London, ending Iran standoff

TEHRAN (Reuters) - The 15 British military personnel who had been held by Iran left Tehran on a flight to London on Thursday, ending a two-week standoff that raised international tension and rattled financial markets.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference broadcast round the world on Wednesday he had decided to forgive and free the 15 sailors and marines even though Britain was not "brave enough" to admit they had strayed into Iran's territory.

IRAN: Hostage Crisis, Britain faked Map?

Daily Mail: How I know Blair faked Iran map
By CRAIG MURRAY, Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Head of the Foreign Office's Maritime

"But what about the map the Ministry of Defence produced on Tuesday, with territorial boundaries set out by a clear red line, and the co-ordinates of the incident marked in relation to it?

I have news for you. Those boundaries are fake. They were drawn up by the MoD. They are not agreed or recognised by any international authority.

To put it at its most charitable, they are a potential boundary. It is accepted practice, where no boundary exists, to work by a rule-of-thumb idea of where a boundary, based on a median line between the two coasts, might be.

But to elevate that to a hard and fast boundary, and then base a major international incident on being a few hundred yards one side or the other, is out of order."

Read Craig Murray's blog here

Iran: US Raid led to Hostage Crisis

Independent: The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
by Patrick Cockburn

Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

IRAN: Coincidence? Iranian Hostage released

Tvnz.co.nz: Iranian hostage released in Iraq

An Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped in Iraq in February has been released and has returned home, Iran's official news agency has reported.

Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped the diplomat in February and Tehran blamed the US military for his abduction.

"Jalal Sharafi, second secretary of Iran's embassy in Baghdad, who was kidnapped in Baghdad on February 4, was released on Tuesday," IRNA reported, adding that he arrived back in Tehran where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.