February 24, 2009: Britain has revealed that, when British troops were under heavy attack in southern Iraq in 2006-7, Iran offered to stop these attacks if Britain would stop trying to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program. During that period, 27 British soldiers were killed, and hundreds of attacks were carried out. Iran was paying over a thousand of Iraqi Shia Arabs about $300 a month to carry out the attacks on the British troops. Britain refused the Iranian offer, and eventually the attacks stopped because British and Iraqi troops killed or arrested most of the terrorists. British and American special operations forces also began working inside Iran, and it was Iran that was persuaded to back off.