Completely unreported in the USA will be a visit by the Turkish Foreign Minister to Tehran on Saturday. Al-Jazeera speculates that this is being used to discuss joint action against the Kurdish nationalist PKK. Only in passing did they comment that the PKK had been attacking Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in northern Iran from Iraq.
Knowing this information, the pieces seem to drop easily into place. We can now deduce how those US arms have been found in the hands of PKK fighters in Turkey and why the top US commander in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, is refusing to aid Turkey in their incursions and why Rice is calling for restraint.
This is just another "Taliban" case. Covert US support for a group which it uses to stage a proxy war against an enemy has backfired. The "enemy of our enemy" has become the enemy of our friend.
First a reminder, the Kurds are not confined to the north of Iraq and south-eastern Turkey. Kurdistan extends into northern Syria, southern Armenia and western Iran. While technically the PKK have relinquished claims for separation from Turkey, many still see the eventual goal of a unified separate homeland for Kurds, a claim that resonates of course with the Zionist aim and Israelis have been active in training members of the official Kurdish forces in Iraq. Indeed that training was seen as a possible pre-payment for facilities to attack the common enemy, Iran:
With Iran becoming Israel's principal enemy, there have been reports of Israelis using Kurdish areas of Iraq to increase its strategic options.
One constraint facing the Israelis, should they ever want to hit Iran, is distance. Most Israeli jets are short range and they have few in-flight tankers. Some studies have suggested that Israel could make refuelling stops at a modern airfield in Kurdistan.
The Peshmerga that the Israelis were also found to be training were of course the Kurdish independence fighters against Saddam Hussein. Although that part of the Kurdish community has has mixed fortunes under the two Bush presidencies, are currently prospering under the US brokered constitution which quarantees them far greater independence within Iraq than the PKK are asking for in Turkey. How natural therefore for a US agency not unconnected with the CIA, to promote attacks on Iran by the Kurds in Iraq. This would provide a further causus bellum in the event that the claims of a nuclear bomb program was met with scepticism after the "Iraqi WMD" claims and in case somebody was intelligent enough to point out that "shaped explosives" were both used by many groups for ambushes and in the oil industry so allegations of "technology transfers" from Iran were redundant.
Now it will be pointed out that Bush has declared the PKK a terrorist organization and has cut off funding. That may well merely be a smokescreen as it is not unknown for the "dark forces" in the US administration to use such groups for their own ends. Indeed, there is another in Iraq which is a dissident group from Iran, fought alongside Saddam and has been the source of dubious "intelligence" about Iranian plans for a nuclear program. Unfortunately, because of their connection with Saddam, they have to be technically disarmed and anyway their mere presence in Iraq and protection by the US would be enough to aggravate the Iranians.
So if the US has shown no compunction in using groups it declares to be terrorists for its own ends, what more natural than to arm the PKK and encourage them to attack Iran. That way, a counter attack would be a justification for an all-out US attack on those supposed "nuclear sites". Unfortunately the arming of one part of the PKK does not mean that those guns will not turn up in the hands of those attacking powers friendly to the USA, namely the Turks. It is even reasonable to conclude that their arming by the Americans emboldened the PKK into increasing their attacks on Turkey in the hopes that they would counter attack and the US drive them out.
Countries you have formal military ties with can be just as unreliable as dissident groups you arm. It looks like the Turks have found common purpose with the Iranians in beating back the Kurds. As Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee commented from Istanbul.
"The last thing the US or Iraq would want would be a joint operation between Turkey and Iran."