The Raid
According to Iranian officials, five U.S. helicopters landed on the roof of the liaison office in Arbil. U.S. soldiers entered the building, detained five people and took away materials. The raid occurred between 3 to 5 a.m., when the U.S. troops entered the liaison office after disarming the guards. Two senior local Kurdish officials said the forces confiscated computers and documents.
In a report which was later confirmed by Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, The Independent noted that instead of the current captives, the U.S. had hoped to capture the deputy head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohammed Jafari, and chief of intelligence of the IRGC, General Manuchehr Frouzandeh, who were on an official visit to Iraq ostensibly to improve co-operation in the area of bilateral security, during which they met the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Barzani stated: "They (the commanders) came here and they came openly. Their meetings with the president and myself were reported on television. The Americans came to detain this delegation, not the people in the office. They came to the wrong place at the wrong time." It was also reported that U.S. troops attempted to detain people at the Arbil airport that same day, but Kurdish forces intervened. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said that there was almost a confrontation between U.S. and Kurdish troops at the airport but that "a massacre was avoided at the last minute."
The raid took place within hours of U.S. President George W. Bush claiming "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops" in an address to the nation.
This was not the first time the United States had arrested alleged IRGC members in Iraq. A few weeks before, on 29 December, U.S. forces in Iraq released alleged Iranian IRGC members who were detained for alleged weapons smuggling after a raid conducted 21 December in Baghdad.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Raid On The Iranian Liaison Office In Arbil
Famous quotes containing the word raid:
“John Brown and Giuseppe Garibaldi were contemporaries not solely in the matter of time; their endeavors as liberators link their names where other likeness is absent; and the peaks of their careers were reached almost simultaneously: the Harper’s Ferry Raid occurred in 1859, the raid on Sicily in the following year. Both events, however differing in character, were equally quixotic.”
—John Cournos (1881–1956)
“Each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)