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BRITISH MARINES TAKE POSITIONS ON IRANIAN BORDER
Anton La Guardia
Royal Marines were deployed to Iraq's border with Iran yesterday in a move that will unnerve Teheran's regime, which fears encirclement by American-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence said the Royal Marines were merely "securing their area of operations" after seizing at the Faw peninsula.
But with Iranian troops manning positions on the other side of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, British forces face a highly sensitive task.
Tensions were illustrated by a succession of border incidents. A rocket struck an Iranian oil refinery depot in Abadan, just across from Basra, on Friday injuring two people while there were reports on Monday that Iranian forces had fired on British troops on the Faw peninsula.
Iran, part of America's "axis of evil", is formally neutral but fears it could be the next target for attack.
It is torn between publicly denouncing the "imperialist" war on a fellow Muslim country and co-operating tacitly with America and Britain in removing the old enemy, Saddam Hussein.
America has waged war against two of Iran's most hated foes, the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Ba'athists in Baghdad. But the "Great Satan", as America is known, now has forces on two of Iran's borders.
Neighbouring Arab countries have long feared a war in Iraq could suck in forces from Turkey and Iran. Western diplomats said Turkish intervention to forestall any Kurdish attempt to seize greater autonomy could encourage Iran to cross the border to support fellow Shi'ites and clear out bases of the main Iranian opposition group, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq.
The leading Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, has thousands of fighters in Iran. Some have slipped into Iraqi Kurdistan and many more may cross the border to claim a stake in the future Iraqi government.
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