Iraq finally protest Iran shelling

NY Times:

Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, delivered a strongly worded demand to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other Iranian officials here on Monday to halt the shelling of a mountainous border region in Iraq’s north, where Mr. Zebari said the bombardment has driven as many as 3,000 Kurdish villagers from their homes and set orchards and fields ablaze.

Mr. Zebari said in an interview that the Iranians, who have refused to acknowledge publicly that the shelling was taking place, did not dispute his account.

He said the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, described the shelling as Iran’s response to guerrilla attacks against it by a group that is opposed to the Iranian government and is believed to have bases on the Iraqi side of the border.

Members of that group, Pezak, have claimed responsibility for attacks inside Iran, and they are believed to have shot down at least one Iranian helicopter in recent months. But Mr. Zebari said the shelling of the villages was indiscriminate and was achieving little against Pezak positions, and he made clear that Iraqi patience was wearing thin with the bombardment, which has taken place intermittently for about two weeks.

“In a normal relationship between two countries, this amounts to an act of aggression,” Mr. Zebari said.

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Zebari seems to have the diplomats knack for the understatement. Most would call it an act of war. If this shelling continues it may be the causus belli for US strikes against Iran.