Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/iraqi-president-decries-u-s-detention-of-iranians Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Iraqi President Jalal Talabani complained Monday that the U.S. is holding Iranians seized in a raid last week. A reporter updates the situation. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. GWEN IFILL: James Glanz, welcome. First, start by telling us how this raid occurred. JAMES GLANZ, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, apparently acting on credible intelligence or what is believed was credible intelligence, the American military first raided a compound that is run by Abdul Aziz Hakim, the head of a very prominent Shiite political party, and then picked up a second group of people in a car with embassy markings, or at least an official embassy car, over on the other side of the river to the west. And in those raids, a number of Iranians were picked up.At least two of the Iranians had diplomatic passports. And it's believed that two of the other Iranians were senior military officials from their country. GWEN IFILL: This was a politically delicate thing, to actually go into that compound and to arrest people who turned out to have links to Jalal Talabani. JAMES GLANZ: Right. Well, a spokesman for the president, Jalal Talabani, later said that two of the people who were picked up, two of the Iranians, were actually there at the invitation of the Iraqi government, the president himself. He extended that invitation, he said, during a visit to Tehran not too long ago, and the idea, according to his office, was that they were making rapprochement with Iran in hopes of talking about security and working on issues of interest to both countries. There was nothing nefarious in that, according to the president. GWEN IFILL: It seems like this is one of those things that one would expect the U.S. officials to coordinate with Iraqi officials. Did that not happen? JAMES GLANZ: We're not sure about that. That's a theme that recurs here.It seems clear that American forces led this raid. At least one of our sources said that it was done in cooperation with Iraqi forces, but later, when we talked to Iraqi political figures and government figures, a number of them were upset that this had happened. They considered it an embarrassment. Whether they were in the loop before the raid took place is still open to question.