Iran Troop Build Up On Kurdish Iraq Border?

By Cernig

According to the Bahrain-based Gulf Daily news, Kurdish sources are reporting a build-up of thousands of Iranian troops along the Northern border with Iraq.

BAGHDAD: Iran is building up its troops near the Iraqi border and is shelling the remote northeast borders.

Two women were injured in the shelling in the Kurdish area of Iraq for the last three days forcing evacuation of 200 families, Hussein Ahmed, the mayor of Qal'at Dizah town close to the Iranian border said.

He said several thousand Iranian soldiers could also be seen near the border.

There was no immediate comment from Tehran or Baghdad on the reports.

Earlier, the Iranian news agency Mehr said an Iranian army helicopter which crashed near the border with northern Iraq had been engaged in a military operation against the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the PKK. Iranian media said six military personnel were killed in the crash, which happened during manoeuvres involving Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Friday.

I hope these reports are either untrue or don't result in the kind of accident that the neocons would love to take advantage of. Iran may well have, legally speaking, the same rights of hot pursuit of terrorists or pre-emptive attack against a state sheltering terrorists as the Bush administration have used and Turkey has threatened - but actually enforcing those rights would put a spark to a massive powderkeg involving not just Iran, the U.S. and Iraq but also the Turks and several other neighbours.