Attacks Iraq

The BBC reports Iraq has accused ian forces of entering Iraqi territory and shelling Kurdish rebel positions in the north:

ian troops bombed border areas near the town of Hajj Umran before crossing into Iraq, the defence ministry in Baghdad said on Sunday.

Last week the Associated Press reported Iraqi President Talabani is concerned about ian troop concentrations on those countries' borders with Iraq:

also reportedly has moved forces to the border, and last week shelled a mountainous region inside Iraq used by ian Kurd fighters for infiltration into , according to Iraqi Kurd officials. No casualties were reported from Friday's artillery and rocket barrage.

's current leadership seems determined to confront the U.S. defies the U.N., ignoring a Security Council call to suspend all nuclear fuel enrichment and instead accelerated the program. ian president Ahmadinejad has said that Israel must be "wiped off the map," called the Holocaust a myth, and suggested Israel be moved to Germany or Alaska. The State Department reports that remains the "most active state sponsor of terrorism."

In January, at the National Review Online, Ilan Berman wrote that 's President Ahmadinejad is actively seeking a crisis with the West:

In a recent closed-door session of the foreign policy and national security committee of the majles, 's parliament, Ahmadinejad laid out the cornerstone of his foreign-policy strategy. The past decade-and-a-half of "détente," Ahmadinejad told lawmakers, had cost the Islamic republic dearly. The message was unmistakable: It is now time for confrontation.

Berman also reminds us that in his manifesto, "Islamic Government," Khomeini outlined the guiding philosophy of the ian mullahs' regime:

To create a victorious and triumphant Islamic political revolution . . . to unite the Moslem nation, [and] to liberate [all] its lands.

That goal is very similar to bin Laden's goal of causing a conflagration, a war between the Islamic world and the infidels.

Last week I wrote that any overt cross-border operations into Iraq by or Turkey would certainly cause al sorts of unanticipated consequences. Maybe the consequences aren't so unanticipated. Maybe 's attack on Iraq is yet another attempt to provoke the United States.