January 10-2014
The Iraqi government says it has arrested nine terrorists for murdering 15 Iranians working to build a pipeline inside Iraq last month.
In Iran, some are trying to blame the gangland-style murders on the United States, presumably in an effort to undercut support for continuing nuclear talks with the United States.
But even the Fars news agency, allied with the Pasdaran, undercut that line by reporting that the Islamic State of Iraq and Ash-Sham has claimed responsibility for the murders. Fars reported that the group’s website included photographs of the murders, which would have been published to prove the group’s involvement and allay suspicions it was falsely claiming the killings.
Iran had announced a few months ago that the pipeline was completed. Clearly, that was false.
According to one of the Iranians injured in the attacks, three cars pulled up at the worksite in Iraq’s Diyala province December 13, then gunmen stepped out and began firing without saying a word.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Ash-Sham is an Al-Qaeda affiliate that won renown killing Shias in Iraq during the US occupation. In the past two years, it has moved into Syria and is one of the major groups battling President Bashar al-Assad. When it started operations there, it changed its name from Islamic State of Iraq to add Ash-Sham, a reference to Greater Syria.
Despite that claim, there are allegations in Iran that the Americans arranged the murders of the pipeline workers. For example, Abbas-Ali Mansuri-Arani, a member of the Majlis Foreign Policy Committee, said, “What we are witnessing in Iraq is the extensive activities of the terrorists who are committing crimes with the assistance of the US intelligence services.”
Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Danaifar, said the Iraqi government told him it had arrested “all” nine of those involved in the murders.
Iraqi Deputy Power Minister Adel Hamid Mahdi, meanwhile, said Iran and Iraq and had agreed on another, short pipeline that will bring 7 million cubic meters per day of Iranian gas to fuel the power plant at Basra. The pipeline where the workmen were killed is to bring fuel to three power plants around Baghdad.
Yet another Iranian pilgrim was killed at the shrine in Samara and 14 others injured in a terrorist bombing, Iran’s hajj affairs office announced.