Another Telegraph Neocon Story Plant

Today the UK's Daily Telegraph has the worrying story of Iranian secret agents ready to spread chaos over the Middle East.

Iran has trained secret networks of agents across the Gulf states to attack Western interests and incite civil unrest in the event of a military strike against its nuclear programme, a former Iranian diplomat has told The Sunday Telegraph.

Spies working as teachers, doctors and nurses at Iranian-owned schools and hospitals have formed sleeper cells ready to be "unleashed" at the first sign of any serious threat to Teheran, it is claimed.

Trained by Iranian intelligence services, they are also said to be recruiting fellow Shias in the region, whose communities have traditionally been marginalised by the Gulf's ruling Sunni Arab clans.

Were America or Israel to attack Iran, such cells would be instructed to foment long-dormant sectarian grievances and attack the ex-tensive American and European business interests in wealthy states such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Such a scenario would bring chaos to the Gulf, one of the few areas of the Middle East that remains prosperous and has largely pro-Western governments.

The Telegraph goes on to describe how many Gulf states have persecuted Shia minorities (with ahelpful map to aid the paranoic)and how non-Arab Iran could mobilze those Arab Shiites "as a way of deterring the Gulf's Sunni rulers from supporting American efforts to stop Iran's nuclear programme".

A scary story indeed, and all according to the testimony of Adel Assadinia, a former career diplomat who was Iran's consul-general in Dubai and an adviser to the Iranian foreign ministry until he defected. The Telegraph has some more detail:

He left his post in Dubai in 2002 and was granted asylum in Europe a year later, having undergone "intimidating" interrogations by Iranian intelligence agents in Teheran. Mr Assadinia plans to give more detail of his claims at a meeting later this month at Westminster, organised by the British Awhazi Friendship Society, which lobbies Parliament, the European Union and the United Nations. He hopes his disclosures will encourage other Iranian officials to follow suit.

Only "intimidating", no waterboarding or stuff? Can Iranian intelligence really be softer in their methods than the CIA?

Joining the dots begins with the upcoming meeting at the UK Houses of Parliament in Westminister - the Telegraph got the name of the organizer wrong, it's the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS). They say they have no links to terror groups, although they do link to groups such as the Democratic Solidarity Party of Al-Ahwaz which eschews terrorism but makes a distinction between terrorism and freedom fighting and is in turn linked to groups which are definitely violent.

But they do have strong ties to neocon groups, which the BAFS has often co-operated with. The reason for such ties is clear - the neocons hope to foment regime change in Iran as a whole by first encouraging Arab seperatists in the Ahwaz (Khuzestan) region into revolt. For instance, there's a co-organizer for the Westminister meeting, the Henry Jackson Society, with which the BAFS has links, particularly via director Daniel Brett. The Henry Jackson Society counts among its patrons such well-known names as Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Richard Pearle and James Woolsey. Signatories of the society's statement of principles include British neocon writers Gerard Baker and Oliver Kamm, Robert Halfon from Conservative Friends of Israel, Richard Dearlove (head of MI6 until 2004) and co-founder Alan Mendoza from the website 18 Doughty Street.

It would have been more honest for the Telegraph to have actually mentioned that, don't you think?

(The BASF website names the hospital the Telegraph refused to - the Iranian Red Crescent Hospital in Dubai, which according to Assadinia is staffed mostly with Iranian spies - although how they managed to find the time to train as secret agents and agents provocateurs isn't explained.)

But the biggest question about this story has to be this - if Assadinia defected in 2002, how come this is the first time he has come forward with these allegation? Isn't the timing - the day after Iran's president and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced they would work together to halt sectarian infighting among Shia and Sunni, saying they were all Muslim first?

You can see, perhaps, why the Iranian government "described Mr Assadinia's claims as "baseless and fabricated" and "described the friendship society as an "illegal" organisation dedicated to stirring up trouble between Iran and its neighbours."