Iran again appears to have its sights set on Basra:
"We believe that the presence of British forces in Basra has destabilized security in this city and has had some negative effects in the form of threats against southern Iran recently," Foreign Minister Manushehr Mottaki said during a visit to Beirut, Lebanon.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran demands an immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra," he added. Basra, where most of Britain's more than 8,000 troops in Iraq are based, is located about 20 miles west of the Iranian border.
The British are not amused:
"What I would say to Iranians that there is no point in trying to divert attention from the issues to do with Iran by calling into question the British presence in Iraq which is there, as I say, with a United Nations mandate and Iraqi support," Blair said after talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
The Iranians had no luck in getting Iraqis to welcome them in the Iran-Iraq War. Despite the Idiot Sadr's devotion to his Iranians masters, I imagine the Shias of Basra have no greater desire to accept Iranians as their masters today.
I do hope the British troops there are up to holding the city. With Iran's attention clearly on Basra, in any crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions, I would not be surprised to see the Iranians try to take what they lost so many men trying to capture twenty years ago.
