quote:

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America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear programme.

In a move that reflects Washington's growing concern with the failure of diplomatic initiatives, CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran's border regions.

The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime.

In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.

Such incidents have been carried out by the Kurds in the west, the Azeris in the north-west, the Ahwazi Arabs in the south-west, and the Baluchis in the south-east. Non-Persians make up nearly 40 per cent of Iran's 69 million population, with around 16 million Azeris, seven million Kurds, five million Ahwazis and one million Baluchis. Most Baluchis live over the border in Pakistan.

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READ MORE HERE

I guess invasion of Iraq will be too difficult. The strategy seems to be as follows:

I- fund ethnic separatism;

II- back ethnic militant groups in sporadic attacks on the regime to provoke a response from the regime;

III- back this up with a vast media campaign that:

i- portrays the separatist leaders as democratic reformers;
ii- ignores or excuses the crimes of the separatis militant groups;
iii- reports (and even exagerates) the crimes of the regime;
iv- exagerates the ethnic problems (all propaganda is based on some truth);

IV- exacerbate the crisis and support the regime's opponents from the ethnic majority (Persians in this case)and paint them as democratic reformers;

IV - turn the whole crisis into a Humanitarian problem requiring "UN intervention" in order to overthrow the regime and break up the country into smaller fragments.

Impossible?
...Balkans anyone...???

[ 28 February 2007: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]