LONDON, 6 October 2005 — A war of words erupted between Britain and Iran after London yesterday accused Tehran of supplying explosives technology to insurgents in Iraq, thus assisting attacks in which eight British soldiers have died there so far.
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) lodged an official protest with Tehran which has strongly denied any involvement in the attacks.
A source at the Iranian Embassy in London rejected any suggestion that Iran was arming insurgents in Iraq and stressed that on the contrary the country (Iraq) was occupied illegally by foreign forces.
A senior FCO official told reporters in London there was also evidence that the Revolutionary Guards had been in contact with Sunni insurgent groups fighting foreign troops in Iraq.
Britain believed the Revolutionary Guards had been responsible for supplying the explosives technology — the specifics of which the official did not detail — used in a series of deadly attacks on British troops earlier this year.
This is the first time British officials have made specific allegations of an Iranian hand in the insurgency in southern Iraq.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the BBC in London that the technology had come from Hezbollah in Lebanon via Iran.
He said that dissidents from the Mehdi Army, the militia controlled by Moqtada Sadr, were suspected of carrying out the attacks.
British forces in Basra recently arrested Ahmed Al-Fartusi, a senior leader of the Mehdi Army, and according to the FCO official was “currently enjoying British hospitality.” The arrest triggered anti-Britain protests in Basra recently.
Asked about a possible Iranian motive for allegedly arming the Shiite insurgents, the FCO official told the BBC that it could be that Iran felt that it had to show that it could not be “pushed around”.
Meanwhile, the war in Iraq and Britain’s role continues to haunt British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A MORI poll commissioned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) revealed yesterday that most Londoners blame the war in Iraq for the suicide bombings in London on July 7 and the botched attempts on July 21. At the same time the poll showed that most Londoners believe that the Metropolitan Police did a good job in reacting to and handling the July 7 bombings in which 56 people died and over 700 injured. Some 77 percent of those polled thought that Scotland Yard handled the emergency well, while some 55 percent thought that the government and London Mayor Ken Livingstone handled the emergency in a satisfactory way.
