Thursday, December 02, 2010
Elder of Ziyon
The Irish government has acted to limit transfers of American weapons to Israel and Iraq through Shannon Airport in the wake of public outrage after the Second Lebanon War, an American diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks reveals.
After the Second Lebanon War, the Israel Defense Forces needed to restore its depleted ammunition stocks, but the ambassador's cable indicates that the Irish government has been making it increasingly difficult for American weapons shipments to Israel to pass through its airport.
The cable, sent from the Dublin embassy in September 2006, says that "although supportive of continued U.S. military transits at Shannon Airport, the Irish Government has informally begun to place constraints on U.S. operations at the facility, mainly in response to public sensitivities over U.S. actions in the Middle East."
According to the ambassador, "Segments of the Irish public ... see the airport as a symbol of Irish complicity in perceived U.S. wrongdoing in the Gulf/Middle East." He said the Irish government "has recently introduced more cumbersome notification requirements for equipment-related transits in the wake of the Lebanon conflict."
And from WSJ:
Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables provide new details on the U.S. assessment of how Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps has promoted Tehran's influence in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The demise of archenemy Saddam Hussein, with whom Tehran fought an eight-year war in the 1980s, presented the Iranians with an unprecedented opportunity, and they appear to have exploited it from Day One.
The leadership of the Qods Force—the Guards' paramilitary and espionage arm—"took advantage of the vacuum" in the aftermath of the fall of Mr. Hussein's regime to begin sending operatives into Iraq when "little attention was focused on Iran," according to an April 2009 dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The cable was part of a trove of classified U.S. diplomatic communications made public this week by WikiLeaks.
(h/t Joel)
