SAS raiders enter Iran to kill gunrunners
British special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces, defence sources have disclosed.
There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.
The unreported fighting straddles the border between Iran and Iraq and has also involved the Iranian military firing mortars into Iraq. UK commanders are concerned that Iran is using a militia ceasefire to step up arms supplies in preparation for an offensive against their base at Basra airport.
An SAS squadron is carrying out operations along the Iranian border in Maysan and Basra provinces with other special forces, the Australian SAS and American special-operations troops. [complete article]
Many years ago an SAS patrol with shotguns and other weapons were captured in the Republic of Ireland by the Garda. They claimed that they had taken a wrong turn because of “bad map reading” although it was suspected that they were en route to assasinate a senior IRA member. After protesting about this British behaviour, the Irish let the SAS soldiers go. If the Iranians capture some SAS soldiers, I don’t think they will be so lucky.
And the Bush administration has the nerve to call the Quds force, part of the Republican Guard, terrorists, while British, American and Australians apparently proceed with nothing less than acts of war inside Iranian territory.
In fact their missions are far more likely to be related to targeting Iranian installations on or near the border for future military aggression by the US air force.
The last time we heard of some of these guys getting caught it was by the Iraqi police while they were in a car with detonators and explosives pretending to be Arabs, and the British army had to blow open a prison and kill umpteen Iraqi police to get them back.
Based on that experience, I don’t expect we’ll hear much about it if Iran catches these men at it. True, I will feel sorry for the men but we cannot but condemn these illegal actions by their governments, who I would hold totally responsible in the case of their deaths.