Word: erbil
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...Even more revealing than the skittish media and internal political maneuvering, analysts here say, is Tehran's muted response to the U.S. military's detention of Iranian security officials in Iraq, and the raid on its official liaison office in Erbil. Both acts might have provoked a harsher response were Tehran more confident that Washington's confrontational rhetoric was meant only to intimidate. Former president Mohammad Khatami, viewed here as a valuable interlocutor in dealing with the United States, attended a session with Senator Bob Kerrey at the World Economic Summit in Davos - under normal circumstances such a meeting would...
...that's not the worst of it. American forces still hold five members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Arrested by American forces in Erbil on Jan. 11, the five are accused by the Administration of helping the Iraqi opposition kill Americans...
...Some Iraqis speculate that the IRGC has already started a campaign of revenge with the killing of five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20, nine days after the arrest of the IRGC members in Erbil. As the logic of the rumor goes, five American soldiers were killed for five Iranians taken; Karbala was an IRGC message to release its colleagues - or else...
...reaction to the Erbil arrests could be a foretaste of things to come as the U.S. ramps up its operations against Iran inside Iraq. Tehran enjoys far warmer ties than Washington does with the Shi'ite ruling alliance in Iraq, ties that have been regularly affirmed by high-profile visits to Tehran by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani (a Kurd) and other key leaders such as recent White House guest Abdulaziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). As long as Washington's objective was to oust Saddam and enable...
...Bush Administration didn't have a sufficiently tough challenge in securing Iraq in the face of insurgency and sectarian conflict, it has now added curbing Iran to its to-do list. Last week's raid in the Kurdish city of Erbil on a building claimed by Iran and the Kurds as a consular facility that saw the arrest of five Iranian officials signaled the onset of an aggressive push-back against Iranian influence in Iraq. And it's not only the Iranians that are unhappy about the new development...