[fastpat]

The war drums are being beaten looudly by the neocons in the White House, but Americans aren't buying it.

Iran's role in Iraq met with skepticism

Updated 2/5/2007 7:42 AM ET
By Barbara Slavin and David Jackson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials from commanders in Iraq to President Bush have stepped up claims that Iran has been supplying Iraqi insurgents with weapons and training to kill U.S. troops.

"Iranian lethal support for select groups of Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq," said a U.S. intelligence assessment of Iraq released Friday.

Such claims, however, are being met with denials from Iran and skepticism at home. Faulty U.S. intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which Bush used to justify in part the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has eroded much of the administration's credibility, military expert Anthony Cordesman said.

"I'm not sure they understand how little credibility these statements have," said Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The great risk is that what may be a real issue will not be seen as real outside the United States."

"There is no truth whatsoever in the allegations that Iran has been supplying weapons to the Iraqi insurgents," said Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, a spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations.

Instead, Mohammadi said, the United States is producing allegations on "a large scale (to) justify a discredited and indeed dangerously flawed policy" in Iraq.

The declassified version of the national intelligence estimate on Iraq released last week included little detail on Iran. National security adviser Stephen Hadley said the administration plans to release a report detailing its evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraqi fighting but is withholding it "to try and put out the facts as accurately as we can."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said administration officials "want to make sure that the briefing … is dominated by facts: serial numbers, technology and so on. And so we just want to make sure that the briefing that is provided is completely reliable."

In recent weeks, Iraqi and U.S. forces have raided Iranian offices in Iraq, including one in the northern city of Irbil. Computers, files and other equipment were seized during the Irbil raid, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.

To date, here are some of the administration's allegations of Iran's influence in Iraq and the evidence backing up the charges:

•Charge:

Iranian weapons, identical to those seized by Israel in 2002, have been found in Iraq.

Evidence: The chartered ship Karine A, which was registered in the Pacific island nation of Tonga, was carrying rockets, grenades and sniper rifles from Iran to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea for delivery to the Palestine Liberation Organization in Gaza, according to the Israeli government. It also carried the powerful plastic explosive known as C-4, Army Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner said in September. C-4 found in Baghdad had identical labels to that found on the ship, he said. Zahner, a top military intelligence official, said the government of Iran controls military-grade explosives.

•Charge:

Weapons with Iranian serial numbers have been seized in Iraq.

Evidence: Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. military's No. 2 general in Iraq, told USA TODAY last week that Iran had supplied Iraqi insurgent groups with Katyusha rockets and RPG-29, a rocket-propelled grenade that can fire armor-piercing rounds. Odierno did not provide details on the serial numbers.