In the now infamous Saturday Baghdad briefing, anonymous U.S. military men explained to the press that the Quds Force was responsible for the explosively formed penetrator or EFP attacks on US troops. One briefer went on to argue that the Quds Force reports directly to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and that as a result, "the activities that the IRGC Quds Force are conducting in Iraq, we assess, are coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.” This accusation was reiterated by White House spokesman Tony Snow who said, "The Quds Force is, in fact, an official arm of the Iranian government and, as such, the government bears responsibility and accountability for its actions."
President Bush also brought up the Quds Force in his recent news conference, but he fell short of accusing the Iranian government:
"What we do know is that the Quds Force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds Force to do what they did."
So now the U.S. has a new enemy in Iraq, but just who are they? Newsweek has published a fairly extensive report on the Quds Force, demonstrating that the evidence against the group is fairly questionable and that some of the Iraqi politicians the US relies on the most, including President Talabani, have close ties with the Quds Force.
An excerpt:
...while the American military is blaming the Quds Force and IRGC for all sorts of misdeeds, the highest officials in the U.S.-backed Iraqi government appear to be buying weapons from them and asking for their help on security issues.
Yet even if elements of the Quds Force are involved in weapons trafficking, it is unclear if they are being directed by Tehran or if they are freelancing. After the war in Bosnia in the '90s, some former Quds Force members were known to engage in smuggling, apparently without the knowledge of their central command.
In a news briefing yesterday, US military officials laid out evidence to back up their controversial assertion that Iran is supplying weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq. The NYTreports:
"In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. [explosively formed penetrators] and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments."
Officials claim that these E.F.P.'s have been responsible for the deaths of 170 US servicemen since their debut in June 2004. That there are Iranian weapons in Iraq is nothing new, what I question is their assertion that the Iranian government is directly complicit in a large scale arms smuggling operation. That is the more damning of the accusations made by the administration and so far they have provided no evidence to support it. Are we expected to make this leap of faith based on the fact that Shiite militiamen were found with Iranian weapons? This is a very serious accusation and along with other brash actions on the US' part including the kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat and the arrest of five Iranian officials puts us on a collision course with Iran eerily similar to that which brought us into conflict with Iraq.
And what of the Sunni insurgents who have been responsible for the majority of coalition casualties? Why is the US not focusing on their funding and weapons sources? Perhaps because then this harsh light would be on our ally Saudi Arabia. According to the Iraq Study Group Report, "funding for the Sunni insurgency comes from private individuals within Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states."
"In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. The missiles were purchased from someone in Romania, apparently through the black market, he said." [more]
I am not saying that it is impossible that the Iranian government is involved in weapons smuggling, only that right now the evidence for it appears as flimsy as that used to accuse Saddam of having weapons of mass destruction. And we all know how that turned out.
"The statements from Washington give the impression that the US has been at war with Shia militias for the past three-and-a-half years while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein's elite military and intelligence units. During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the US and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces."
He goes on to say:
"The US stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position in four years ago. Then President Bush and Tony Blair claimed that Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying that Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help."
Another update: the power point presentation shown to journalists at the news briefing. Closest we can get to it as voice and video recording was forbidden.
Constant in President Bush's admonishments of Iran is the accusation that the country is supplying weapons to the the militias of Iraq. Earlier this year the Washington Post created quite a stir when they reported that several hundred British troops whose mission it is to intercept weapons coming into Iraq from Iran, had yet to find evidence of high-volume weapons supply operation.
"It's a question of intelligence versus evidence," Labouchere's commander, Brig. James Everard of Britain's 20th Armored Brigade, said last month at his base in the southern region's capital, Basra. "One hears word of mouth, but one has to see it with one's own eyes. These are serious consequences, aren't they?"
The British have intercepted a small amount of weapons being smuggled into Iraq by the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, but David Axe of World Politics Watchexplains that this does not indicate that Iran is smuggling massive quantities of weapons into Iraq. I don't want to go into it here, but Axe makes a very convincing argument.
Yesterday, the LA Times revived this issue in a very interesting investigative report.
"During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol."
As Peter Felstead, editor of Jane's Defense Weekly, explains a lot of rather sophisticated weapons have actually been smuggled in by Syria, not Iran.
The Bush administration is not alone in its accusations that Iran is sending weapons into Iraq. In the interest of balance, I would like to point out a report published by the Jamestown Foundation and written by Mounir Elkhamri, a Middle East Military Analyst for the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. In this report, Elkhamri provides compelling evidence that Iran is actively contributing to the civil war by arming militias.
I would argue that perhaps both sides have merit; Iranian weapons and other materials are being smuggled into Iraq, but the weapons are not being supplied to the militias currently engaged in the civil war. This would be consistent with reports that Iranian efforts are directed towards building an infrastructure in Iraq that could be activated in the event of a US attack on Iran, and that these weapons and capabilities are not being used in the current conflict.
