Jon Snow of Channel Four news is reporting from Iraq this week. Tonight he came out with a great journalistic 'scoop'.
While I realise Jon Snow isn't independent media, he is the closest thing to it regularly permitted on British TV. It is highly significant to lots of issues discussed here ( the occupation, Irans nuclear ambitions, US and UK allegations of Iranian involvement ) and this transcript isn't yet available on the Ch4 website or anywhere else. As this report flies in the face of all other US/UK journalism on the subject and carries serious implications I hope it is allowed to remain here despite its obvious mainstream source..
While I realise Jon Snow isn't independent media, he is the closest thing to it regularly permitted on British TV. It is highly significant to lots of issues discussed here ( the occupation, Irans nuclear ambitions, US and UK allegations of Iranian involvement ) and this transcript isn't yet available on the Ch4 website or anywhere else. As this report flies in the face of all other US/UK journalism on the subject and carries serious implications I hope it is allowed to remain here despite its obvious mainstream source..
Snow in Baghdad
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I went to the National Security Council this afternoon for a ninety minute briefing, off the record and on the record, with a man who is a position to know about Irans relations with Iraq, and he told me that he has been asked by the american ambassador in Baghdad to go to Baghdad for Iran to assist in trying to bring about a situation where america could reduce her forces in Iraq by some 60,000. I was able to see some documentary evidence of this with an american seal on it and the ambassadors signature at the bottom. He also showed me other material and I am satisfied that over the last six months he has been repeatedly requested to go to Baghdad and at the moment Iran hasn't decided what to do because the Iraqis want to keep it quiet, the americans want to keep it quiet but Iran says 'if we are going to take on this role then we'd like people to know'.
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Corrections and complications
07.03.2006 22:41
My first impression of his report is that it gives creedence to the threads supporting Fisks observations that the Sunni are the most at risk population in Iraq.
There is a 'conspiracy theory' propagated on various western blogs, but more importantly accepted by many Iranians that the Iranian Mullahs are agents of the British state. This is so 'far out' that it is barely reported in the West, but given Snows report, combined with historical British involvement in Iran, it should be considered. Could the threatened 'invasion of Iran' simply be distraction from todays current atrocities in Iraq ? Could the obvious Iranian influenced Shia dominance post-Saddam be deliberate rather than the basic error it is normally assumed to be ? I'd guess even if this strange possibility is correct then the situation is more complex than we suspect. Consider this recent report :
Blaming the British
From cabbies to shahs, most Iranians believe political events can be traced back to English interference, writes Robert Tait
Suggestions that the convulsive events of 1979, which ushered in the Islamic republic, were manipulated and orchestrated by the British are widely accepted here as a given. It is a belief held, even before his reign was swept to oblivion in a revolutionary tidal wave, by the last shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Pahlavi