Iran 83

'Iran target of US Gulf military moves, Gates says.
Guardian Unlimited

Increased US military activity in the Gulf is aimed at Iran's "very
negative" behaviour, the Bush administration said today.

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that the decision
to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier
to the Gulf in conjunction with a "surge" of troops in Iraq was
designed to show Iran that the US was not "overcommitted" in Iraq.

Speaking in Brussels after meeting Nato officials, Mr Gates said: "We
are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf
region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing
strong presence in that area for a long time into the future."

His remarks followed tough comments on Iran at the weekend from other
senior US officials. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, accused Iran of
"fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq", while the national security
adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the US was "going to need to deal with
what Iran is doing inside Iraq".Such remarks, following the prospect
of "hot pursuit" raids into Iran as raised by George Bush in his
televised address last week, have fuelled speculation that the US is
softening up the American public for possible action against Tehran. The increasingly confrontational pose struck by the US is a
repudiation of one of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study
Group, which called for the start of a dialogue with Iran and Syria
in an effort to extricate the US from Iraq.

Mr Gates, who as recently as 2004 publicly called for diplomatic
engagement with Iran, said the situation was now different. In 2004,
Iran was concerned by the presence of US forces on its eastern and
western borders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its behaviour had changed.

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that
they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in
many ways," he said. "They are doing nothing to be constructive in
Iraq at this point."

"And so the Iranians are acting in a very negative way in many
respects. My view is that when the Iranians are prepared to play a
constructive role in dealing with some of these problems then there
might be opportunities for engagement."

Besides concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, the US has accused
Tehran of supporting Shia militia and of not doing enough to stop
foreign fighters from infiltrating Iraq.
US-led forces in northern Iraq arrested five Iranians last week who
the US military says were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard
faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq - a claim Iran has
rejected.'

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