Target Tehran: Washington sets stage for a new confrontation

The US yesterday took another step towards confrontation with Iran despite all the protestations of the Bush regime that they have no intention of engaging in war with Tehran.

Senior US defence officials in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the bombs were manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shia militants in Iraq. The weapons, identified as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) are said to be capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

The officials speaking in Baghdad used aggressive rhetoric suggesting that Washington wants to ratchet up its confrontation with Tehran. It has not ruled out using armed force and has sent a second carrier task force to the Gulf.

"We assess that these activities are coming from senior levels of the Iranian government," said an official in Baghdad, charging that the explosive devices come from the al-Quds Brigade and noting that it answers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. This is the first time the US has openly accused the Iranian government of being involved in sending weapons that kill Americans to Iraq.

The allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.

The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 US soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells (often 120mm or 155mm) taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children's toys or to open garage doors.

Such bombs were used by guerrillas during the Irish war of independence in 1919-21 against British patrols and convoys. They were commonly used in the Second World War, when "shaped charges", similar in purpose to the EFPs of which the US is now complaining, were employed by all armies. The very name - explosive formed penetrators - may have been chosen to imply that a menacing new weapon has been developed.

At the end of last year the Baker-Hamilton report, written by a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, suggested opening talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Iraq crisis. Instead, President Bush has taken a precisely opposite line, blaming Iran and Syria for US losses in Iraq.

I've put in bold the points that I find important here. Why would the Shia administration in Iran arm the Sunni insurgency? A Sunni insurgency that is engaged in a civil war with the Shia population of Iraq whom Iran support? This makes absolutely no sense, and yet that is the charge that the Bush administration is making.

Nor do they make this allegation on the record. I notice that these briefings are being made anonymously.

Their argument does not stand up to any logical examination, indeed they are reversing what they previously claimed about Iraqi military capabilities. We are now being told that the Iraqis are so militarily incompetent that they could only possess such weaponry if it were supplied by Iran. However, four years ago we were told that we had to go to war with Iraq because it had the capability of producing a nuclear bomb and a huge arsenal of WMD. Now we are told that they are incapable of producing weapons that Irish guerillas could produce in 1919 without Iranian help.

The case against Iran is even shakier than the case that was produced against Iraq four years ago. However, the very fact that the US are producing anonymous briefings on this displays quite clearly their intent.

It could be argued that their intent is merely to scapegoat Iran for the Bush administration's failings in Iraq; however, if one looks at statements from Perle and Netanyahu I would argue that the administration are now actively making a case for war against Iran. I've argued previously about how insane I think that proposal is, but we should be under no illusion that this is now what the Bush administration is attempting to do.

For the first time, American officials provided a specific casualty total from these weapons, saying they had killed more than 170 Americans and wounded 620 since June 2004, when one of the devices first killed a service member.

They are now anonymously claiming that Iranians are killing Americans and, for the first time, supplying actual numbers to support their insane contention.

Robert Gates can state as many times as he wants that the US has no plans to attack Iran but only a fool would pretend that the administration has not now actively started to make it's case for such a war publicly.

And with the recent news that this war could start within the next couple of months, it is time that Democrats started to seriously question what Bush is planning to do. And hopefully, unlike Edwards, they will seriously start to question the administration's "logic".

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tag: Iraq, Bush, Iraq war study group, Netanyahu, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Perle, neo-cons