Iran Charges Reflect Failed Iraq Policy
by Stephen Zunes

Faced with growing public opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, the Bush administration has been desperately trying to divert attention to Iran. Washington has gone so far as to make a series of dubious and unfounded charges that blame the Iranian government for the difficulties facing American forces fighting the Iraqi insurgency.

Despite the absence of any credible reports of Iranian involvement in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, President George W. Bush last month formally authorized U.S. forces to “kill or capture” suspected Iranian agents in Iraq. “It makes sense that if somebody’s trying to harm our troops, or stop us from achieving our goal,” Bush said , “that we will stop them.” It is unclear how U.S. occupation forces will be able to consistently discern the many thousands of ordinary Iranians who come to Iraq on business or for religious pilgrimages from these alleged agents they are authorized to kill. But the U.S. authorization does appear to effectively grant a license to assassinate Iranian officials who serve in various diplomatic functions. Heavily armed American forces have already seized several Iranian diplomats over strong protests of both the Iranian and Iraqi governments.

Virtually all attacks against U.S. forces over the past couple of years have come from Baathist, Sunni, and other anti-Iranian groups. If Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias are also now targeting American forces, as President Bush implies, U.S. soldiers are now caught in a wedge between militants of both Arab communities. Despite U.S. charges, however, U.S. soldiers at this point have little to fear from Iran or Iranian-backed elements.

Similarly, of the more than 10,000 suspected insurgents arrested in U.S. counter-insurgency sweeps, the relatively few foreigners among them have been Arabs, not Iranians. It makes little sense, then, why the Bush administration has depicted Iran as the principal foreign threat to U.S. forces in Iraq. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, compiled by America’s sixteen intelligence agencies and issued on February 11, downplayed Iran’s role in Iraq’s ongoing violence and instability.

Indeed, the Bush administration’s sudden focus on Iran’s role in Iraq may simply be an effort to provoke an Iranian reaction that could then become an excuse for war. Whatever the reason, the motivation for blaming Iran must be pretty strong, given how much effort the U.S. government is putting into promoting such weak evidence.

The Most Recent Charges

The administration’s case so far has been based primarily on assertions that bomb fragments, such as those displayed by U.S. military officials in a February 11 press conference in Baghdad, were of Iranian origin. They have shown no proof making this linkage, however. U.S. officials originally promised that they would be able to show documents, computer files, confessions by captured Iranians, or evidence that Iranian officials were caught with explosives. None of this has been made public, however, raising doubts as to whether such evidence even existed in the first place.

U.S. officials have noted the increased sophistication over the past several months of what are known as “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs), which have been used by Iraqi insurgents against U.S. and Iraqi military convoys. The increased sophistication is not necessarily a result of outside aid, however. In virtually every conflict, particularly those involving irregular warfare, each side constantly seeks to improve the accuracy and lethality of its weapons in the course of the struggle.

Of particular concern to U.S. officials has been the increase in attacks by IEDs using “explosively formed projectiles” (EFPs). U.S. officials claim that such devices have killed 170 U.S. and allied soldiers, which constitutes only a small proportion of the nearly 4000 U.S. and allied troops killed in the war so far. But the capability of these EFPs to penetrate heavy armor makes them particularly difficult to defend against.

While the Bush administration insists that the machine-tooling was so sophisticated that they could only have been manufactured in Iran, British government scientists have found that the devices could have simply been “turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.” The pre-invasion Iraqi army and the munitions industry that supported it certainly possessed enough resident technical expertise to produce the material that the insurgents are using. Indeed, it is rather bizarre that the same U.S. administration that insisted just four years ago that Iraq was technologically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb would now be incapable of developing an effective roadside bomb without direct support from its neighbor Iran.

Furthermore, so many metal tubes and explosives were stolen from Iraqi army stockpiles during the chaos following the 2003 U.S. invasion, the insurgents have enough materiel to manufacture their own IEDs for decades. It is also important to note that these more lethal IEDs are not a recent nefarious Iranian invention designed to attack American troops. Indeed, insurgent groups such as the Irish Republican Army have used EFPs to attack enemy patrols for decades.

Even if the pieces of weaponry displayed by U.S. military officials came from Iran, there is a huge black market in various explosive devices in Iraq. So it would not be surprising to find components from any number of countries, including those of recent manufacture. Given the lack of security along the long Iranian-Iraqi border, it would not be difficult to smuggle weapons across the frontier without the knowledge of either government. Furthermore, despite its repressive theocratic orientation, the Iranian regime is hardly monolithic. Even if some of these devices were of Iranian origin, it is far more likely that they entered Iraq through the machinations of individual Iranian officers or criminal gangs than as a result of orders from the “highest levels of the Iranian government,” as alleged by the United States.

In short, the administration has thus far made a series of dubious assertions without evidence. “We know more than we can show,” one senior official claimed when pressed for tangible evidence that the EFPs were made in Iran. Unless or until they can show more, however, there is no reason to believe their alarmist claims.

Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, admitted that there was no proof that the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with the lethal weaponry. The British government withdrew similar charges over a year ago. The Iraqi government has also denied U.S. accusations of an Iranian connection.