Think Tank: US Exaggerating Iran Threat For Military Intervention

RTTNews
Tuesday May 29, 2007

The United States is falsely accusing Tehran of supporting Iraqi militias in stoking violence in Iraq as a pretext for a military intervention in the Islamic republic, a leading British think-tank has said in a report.

In its report, the British American Security Information Council or Basic has pointed out that there was no hard evidence to link Iran with Iraqi militancy.

"Whatever the true nature of Iranian military action in Iraq, few independent analysts believes Tehran is playing a decisive role in the sectarian warfare and insurgency."

The report said given the close ties between Shia Muslim in Iran and Iraq, which has a dominant Shia population in the south, Iran's close relations with Shia Iraqis were "legitimate acts of foreign relations and cross-border movements of people", and it was outrageous to portray it as Iranian involvement in the Iraqi militants' violent campaign against American and British occupational forces.

It said the Bush administration's clandestine efforts to highlight the "threat" from Iran could be part of a strategy to find a "scapegoat" for its own failure in Iraq and is seen as a replay of the American-British campaign against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

"If Tehran can be cast as a source of regional instability in the eyes of the international community, then the US administration's hand will be strengthened as it seeks support for stronger measures to oppose Iranian nuclear ambitions," the report said.