Vol. 71/No. 23      June 11, 2007

Today, Tehran announced it is holding three Iranian Americans it has charged with “endangering national security” and “espionage.” Many U.S. politicians and pundits used the news to call for canceling the talks with Tehran and taking harsher measures against Iran.

The Baghdad meeting between the two governments, the first since the 1979 Iranian revolution, reportedly focused on the spiraling violence in Iraq. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told reporters after the meeting, “I laid out before the Iranians a number of our direct, specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq, their support for the militias that are fighting both the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces.” Crocker repeated Washington’s accusation that explosives and other munitions used by Iraqi militias come from people in Iran connected with the government, which Tehran has denied. Such activities must cease and “we would be looking for results,” he said.

During the meeting, the U.S. Navy continued war games they had started five days earlier in the Gulf. They involve a large flotilla of U.S. warships, including two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers that sailed through the Straits of Hormuz May 23. The military maneuvers are to last two weeks.

The nine participating ships carry some 17,000 personnel and 140 aircraft. It is the largest movement of naval force in daylight hours in the Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

On May 11, U.S. vice president Richard Cheney gave a speech on the deck of aircraft carrier John C. Stennis, 150 miles off Iran’s coast, threatening Tehran and assuring pro-imperialist forces in the region. “We’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region,” he said.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, aimed at meeting the country’s growing energy needs.

As U.S. ships entered the Gulf for the war drill, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a report detailing Iran’s progress in enriching uranium in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,” said IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei. “From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.”

Washington immediately said it would use the IAEA report to get agreement for expanding the sanctions against Tehran that the UN Security Council previously authorized.

When Tehran announced May 29 it had charged three Iranian-Americans with spying and trying to destabilize the Islamic Republic, these threats escalated. The three are Parnaz Azima, a reporter for Radio Farda, a U.S.-sponsored station that broadcasts into the country; Haleh Esfandiari, the Middle East program director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington; and Kian Tajbakhsh, a New York-based urban planner affiliated with George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
 
 
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