http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.eceSurprise! Somebody inform Mr. O'Reilly that the retired colonel was on the money and that, indeed, the U.S. may be to blame. Those who deride Iran's actions have
zero moral high ground, assuming that this is a credible story from the UK's "The Independent".
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.
Read it all.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece