Day: August 20, 2007

Pakistan Update: Iranians Rescued

Politics:

The foreign minister of Pakistan threatens that they will resume Nuclear testing if India does. The government is still upset about the nuclear deal with India. They say Pakistan needs civil nuclear energy every bit as much as India does, and that’s a very true statement. The catches are the instability in their government, and their lack of control in the tribal regions — without those two catches, I would wager the US would broker an equal deal with Pakistan, and with load shedding they need that badly.

Continue reading “Pakistan Update: Iranians Rescued”

Iran Attacks Iraq

Iran has shelled Kurdish villages in Iraq; this is clearly an act of war against a sovereign state.

Iraqi Kurdish officials expressed deepening concern yesterday at an upsurge in fierce clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces in the remote border area of north-east Iraq, where Tehran has recently deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.

Jabar Yawar, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan regional government, said four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces had hit mountain villages high up on the Iraqi side of the border, wounding two women, destroying livestock and property, and displacing about 1,000 people from their homes. Mr Yawer said there had also been intense fighting on the Iraqi border between Iranian forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed Iranian Kurdish group that is stepping up its campaign for Kurdish rights against the theocratic regime in Tehran.

This comes after an Iranian helicopter was downed, with claims after by an Iranian Kurdish rebel group (PJAK) that they had done it.

UPDATE: Masked gunmen have seized 31 hostages off a bus in Southern Iran, Continue reading “Iran Attacks Iraq”