The drumbeat for a war with Iran gets a little louder...
U.S. says Iran buys Iraq militia with arms, cash By Peter Graff
Thu Sep 28, 7:42 AM ET
Iran is funneling weapons and cash to buy the loyalty of armed groups in Iraq, but its long- term influence is bound to wane as Iraqis focus more on their own interests, a senior U.S. military official said.
The United States and Britain have in the past accused Iran of fostering violence in Iraq. The Islamic Republic denies it.
But the official gave far more detail, and said the latest weapons finds -- including explosives bearing factory stamps indicating they come from Iran -- show that the policy of arming Iraqi militia is supported at high levels in Iran and not the work of rogue Iranian operatives.
"You see them enabling all comers," he said. "And by the way, nobody in this country stays bought. You're rented."
The senior military official was discussing intelligence issues under condition he not be named, in a briefing with journalists in Baghdad on Wednesday, the transcript of which was made available on Thursday.
He estimated that Iran has sent "millions of dollars" to the Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, including rogue elements that had slipped out of Sadr's direct control.
Iranian weapons found in Iraq include surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank rockets like those used by Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel, as well as tank-destroying Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs) that have become common in roadside bombs used to attack U.S. and British troops.
"When you talk about EFP's, that is almost uniquely Iranian. In fact, the fingerprint of copper plate being formed in a machine shop, I mean, the pattern is so identical that, you know, we can easily identify it right there."
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He said a cache of 4-6 EFPs were found a few months ago in Baghdad, along with C-4 military explosives bearing red labels printed in English which match factory codes from Iranian material Israel has said it has intercepted en route to Lebanon.
Similar labels have appeared on explosives found by British troops in the south of Iraq, he said.
"The control of military-grade explosives in Iran is controlled through the state apparatus and is not committed through rogue elements right there. It is a deliberate decision on the part of elements associated with the Iranian government to affect this type of activities."
Iranians are Shi'ites, like a majority of Iraqis, and under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated secular rule several of the Shi'ite religious parties that now lead Iraq's ruling coalition were based in exile in Iran.
But the official said parties seen as pro-Iranian were already falling behind in Iraq, losing ground to groups like Sadr's who portray themselves more as Iraqi nationalists.
"For them to function effectively inside Iraq, they have to make a decision to be Iraqi," he said.
"Iran only has a window of opportunity to influence Iraq before Iraq -- and its natural tendencies as both an Arab state and one who's got a whole series of friction points with the Islamic Republic -- will start to take over."
He said Iran had fomented violence in Iraq, especially places like Basra in the south, but this could be counter productive because of mainly ethnic-Persian Iran's own worries about unrest among its Arab and Kurdish minorities.
"It's not in their best interest to have a destabilized Iraq, because guess what? There are Arabs in the south (of Iran) and Kurds in the north that pose significant challenges to Iranian internal stability," he said.
"But nonetheless, they're not sure who is going to come out on top. And so basically they fund everybody." |
