Sophisticated anti-tank and anti-personel devices have been turning up in Iraq and are credited with killing about 170 US Servicemen. Yesterday, the US Military revealed proof that these devices, as well as other supplies and logistic support to insurgent groups in Iraq have their origin in Iran.
After weeks of internal debate, senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence for the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war, and said those weapons had been used to kill more than 170 Americans in the past three years.
Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor like butter. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.'s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.
In a news briefing held under strict security, those officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. 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 senior Iranian leaders had authorized the smuggling of those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference....
Whatever doubts were created about the timing and circumstances of the weapons disclosures, the direct physical evidence presented on Sunday was extraordinary.
The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrive in Iraq in the form of what they described as a "kit" containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts — like a shaped, concave lid that folds into the ball while hurtling toward its target.
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.
But then the officials went much further, asserting without specific evidence that the Iranian security apparatus, called the Islamic Republican Guard Corps - Quds Force controlled the delivery of the materials to Iraq. And in a further inference, the officials asserted that the Quds Force, sometimes called the I.R.G.C.-Quds, could be involved only with the complicity of the Iraqi government.
"We have been able to determine that this material, especially on the E.F.P. level, is coming from the I.R.G.C. - Quds Force," said the senior defense analyst. That, the analyst said, meant direction for the entire operation was "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government."
Much of the work to uncover the covert supply trail from Iran to Iraq was done by the no less covert Task Force 16: A unit consisting of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force soldiers, and CIA operatives whose mission it is to target Iranians trafficking arms and training Shiite militia forces, and kill or capture Iranian operatives operating within Iraq. Last month they raided a diplomatic mission in Irbil, Iraq and captured a high ranking Quds Force officer, whose passport is displayed above, as well as a large cache of operational paperwork directly linking the government of Iran to arms shipments to Iraq.
The Quds Force is a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that trains and equips Shiite militants outside Iran, like Hizbollah, and the Iraqi "sectarian" militia the Madhi Army.
Be aware: Task Force 16 exists for one purpose. And if I were an Iranian operative in Iraq, I'd be worried.
