Iran, So Far Away, Part 6

Silly me, and here I was thinking that we might want to be concerned with reports that the Israeli Mossad was pretending to be the CIA in order to recruit Pakistani Sunni militants to attack Iran.  Clearly the Israelis are our buddies.

According to a report in Foreign Policy, agents with Israel’s Mossad spy agency posed as CIA operatives as they tried to recruit members of the Pakistan-based Sunni terrorist network Jundallah to launch attacks against Iran. The alleged revelations come at the tail end of a week where an apparent covert war against Iran’s nuclear program made headlines when a bombing in Tehran killed an Iranian nuclear scientist, the fourth such assassination in two years.

The latest report surfaced through a U.S. intelligence memo on Mossad’s work to recruit members of the militant group. Foreign Policy learned of the memo, which was prepared at the end of the Bush administration’s tenure, and launched an 18 month investigation.

In what was known as a “false flag” operation — posing as another country’s operatives — the Mossad agents sought to build contacts with Jundallah, which is now designated by the U.S. as a terror organization. Human rights groups have long documented repression of Iran’s Balochi minority, both on the basis of sectarianism (Shia constitute the majority of iran) and ethnicity. Still, the designation of Jundallah, which commits atrocities such as bombings of Shia mosques, bars U.S. contacts.

When President George W. Bush was briefed on the memo about Mossad’s activities, he “went absolutely ballistic,” according to Foreign Policy reporter Mark Perry’s sources. Other current and former intelligence sources corroborated Perry’s report.

And now a dead Iranian nuclear scientist turns up this week in the middle of rush hour traffic in Tehran.   Brilliant.  Wonder who's responsible for that, while we're at it.  To recap, our friends are pretending to be us, recruiting Pakistani terrorists to attack Iran.  How messed up is that little batch of realpolitik?  Dubya being furious about it sure didn't change our relationship with Israel much.

When President Obama came in, I wonder if he was briefed on it.  It would certainly explain the cold shoulder he's rightfully given Bibi Netanyahu.  Once again, I can't think of any other country on Earth that would be allowed to get away with doing this to us.