Leaflets said to warn of Iran move into north Iraq

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-29078820070821

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurdish authorities in northeastern Iraq said on Tuesday they were investigating the authenticity of leaflets warning villagers to evacuate ahead of an Iranian military offensive against Kurdish rebels.

Hundreds of villagers have fled their homes in Iraq's mountainous northeast while others hid in caves after what local authorities said was days of intermittent shelling by Iran across the border.

So far there has been no official comment from either Tehran or Baghdad about the shelling.

Cross-border skirmishes occasionally occur as Iraq's neighbours Turkey and Iran combat Kurdish separatist rebels operating from bases in Iraq's mountainous and remote north and northeast.

The government of Iraq's largely autonomous region of Kurdistan said it was investigating after villagers said they had seen the leaflets thrown from helicopters on Monday.

Residents said there were no identifying marks on the leaflets, written in Kurdish, apart from the words "The Islamic Republic of Iran" across the top and bottom.

The leaflets said villagers had 48 hours to evacuate before an Iranian offensive began.

"They do not carry an official stamp of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards or the Iranian Defence Ministry," said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the Kurdish government.

"These leaflets made many people leave their homes."


The leaflets said the offensive would be around the villages of Qandoul, Haj Omran and Isaw and the town of Qal'at Dizah, 325 km north of Baghdad.

Two women have been wounded, livestock killed, farms and orchards set ablaze and homes damaged in the shelling near small villages across a front of about 50 km, local officials have said in the past three days.




Prelude to an Attack on Iran "There will be an attack on Iran." ROBERT BAER
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1625957&mesg_id=1625957



Turkey to build 3 power plants in Iran

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/96368.html
ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 21 Turkey has said that as part of its new deals with Iran it will build three natural gas transformation power plants of 2,000 megawatts in the Islamic republic.

"Electricity connections have a great importance within the European electricity network. Turkey has an outstanding geographical position as a passageway regarding natural gas, oil and electricity as well. All the recent developments make Turkey a key energy player in the world," Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi Guler said Monday.

The comments, reported by the Anatolia news agency, came after Guler returned from Iran.


http://voanews.com/english/2007-08-20-voa14.cfm
Iran Shells Iraq's Kurdish Region
By Brian Padden
Irbil
20 August 2007

Despite a recent announcement by Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA, saying Iranian and Iraqi security officials signed a border security pact, there are ongoing reports Iran is shelling the border areas in the Kurdish region of Iraq. VOA's Brian Padden recently visited the Kurdish village, Haji Umran, on the Iraq-Iran border.


Kurds walk through a field in northern Iraq (file)
The mountain village, Haji Umran, is a transit point for trade between the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Iran.

The surrounding countryside is dotted with farms and herds of sheep and goats. During the day, it is a quiet and peaceful village. But Ali Karter Hussein, a teacher in Haji Umram, says, for the past few months, Iranian forces have been shelling the border area at night.

He says the Iranians shell almost every night, using strong spotlights to spot targets.

Haji Umran Mayor Ahmed Hamad-Amin says, so far, only some livestock has been killed. He recently met with security forces on the Iranian side of the border.

He says the Iranians say they will halt the shelling, at some point, but, for now, they have a reason to fire.

purposely on "surge" till Sept 15 - And one can bet Bush's 9-11 speech will say up how great everything is going in Iraq with the occupation and the escalation and how we need to go into Iran to finish the job!

Anything to force us to keep the war for corporate profits going for many more years!

TomDispatch.com editor Tom Engelhardt writes:

News stories just out report that the Bush administration is planning to designate Iran's entire Revolutionary Guard Corps a "specially designated global terrorist" in order to tighten sanctions on that country. This follows a many-months-long drumbeat of U.S. claims against Iran -- for arming not just Shiite militias (and Sunni insurgents) with the most sophisticated roadside bombs to attack American troops, but the Taliban as well (an especially unlikely charge). It also follows a growing eagerness in Congress for passage of the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act; reports of rising administration frustration over the UN Security Council's unwillingness to pass a third round of sanctions against Iran; a flurry of insider leaks that the Cheney wing of the administration is again pushing for military action against the Iranians and that the Vice President himself has urged the launching of "airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps"; reports that neocon think-tanks and pundits are joining the attack-Iran fray; constant claims from the President's commanders and diplomats that the hand of Iran is behind any administration misstep in the Middle East. In this context, it's worth remembering that the President has long claimed he would not leave office with the Iranian nuclear situation unsettled.

Michael Klare's latest piece offers perhaps the crucial context within which to consider Cheney's urge to launch an air assault on Iran. If we are, as Klare writes, entering a "tough-oil era," if global oil supplies are already under intense pressure and oil prices ready to leap on any hint of possible oil disaster anywhere on the planet, then imagine what a major air assault on Iran before January 2009 might mean. Actually, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates helped us imagine just this at his confirmation hearings back in December 2006 when asked about the effects of such an attack: "It's always awkward to talk about hypotheticals in this case. But I think that while Iran cannot attack us directly militarily, I think that their capacity to potentially close off the Persian Gulf to all exports of oil, their potential to unleash a significant wave of terror both in the -- well, in the Middle East and in Europe and even here in this country is very real."

Such an attack would, of course, be a straightforward act of global economic madness; but, given the cast of characters - a classic neocon quip of the pre-Iraq invasion period was ""Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran..." -- that hardly takes the possibility off the hypothetical "table" where all "options" so obdurately remain. An assault on Iran aside, Klare, author of the indispensable Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum, suggests the nature of the hair-raising energy world we are now entering.

http://www.energybulletin.net/33630.html

Be sure to read the entire Michael Klare article that Tom Engelhardt is referencing.

In but one sign of the new reality, the price of benchmark U.S. light, sweet crude oil for next-month delivery soared to new highs on July 31, topping the previous record for intraday trading of $77.03 per barrel set in July 2006. Some observers are predicting that a price of $80 per barrel is just around the corner; while John Kildruff, a perfectly sober analyst at futures broker Man Financial, told Bloomberg.com, "We're only a headline of significance away from $100 oil." New disruptions in Nigerian or Iraqi supplies, or a U.S. military strike against Iran, he explained, could trigger such a price increase in the energy equivalent of a nano-second.