Iranian Support for Lethal Activity in Iraq

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Iranian Support for Lethal Activity in Iraq is a U.S. military intelligence report stating that Iran has supplied shoulder-fired missiles and armor-piercing bombs to Iraqi insurgents, along with TNT, triggering devices, rockets and other weapons.

A US official said:

"More than 170 U.S. and coalition troops have been killed by these things, and 620 wounded." [1]

According to the report, Iraqi militants engaged in anti-coalition violence have gotten support from elements of Iran's Qods Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that carries out operations outside of Iran.

The report also said:

  • "There is a growing body of evidence pointing to Iranian supply of EFPs to Iraqi extremist groups."

Contents

[edit] Responses to the report

Iran rejects U.S. accusations of Iranian leadership arming Shiite militants in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs: "Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable. [2] "They condemn us for making problems in Iraq, but they don't have any documentary proof," Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hossaini told reporters. "Lots of this evidence is fake, artificial. For example, when they wanted to start a war in Iraq, they made plenty of evidence that there were lots of weapons in Iraq, though the investigators of the International Atomic Energy Agency said they couldn't find any weapons in Iraq," he said. "Right now they're using weapons [with certain markings], but it doesn't prove where these weapons came from.[3]

[edit] Date format controversy

During a television interview with Charlie Rose, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to United Nations, has noted the documents presented by the US to support claims of Iran's involvement, uses the American dating format rather than the internationally recognized format. Except for Micronesia, Palau and the United States, the rest of the world uses a big endian or little endian dating format. Zarif said these things indicated that the evidence was fabricated: "The evidence that has been produced -- in fact fabricated -- is preposterous. It doesn't-- the dates, if, you look at the evidence, the dates that are used in these mortars are written in American date format, putting month first and date second, whereas nowhere in the world people use month first and date second. Everywhere in the world, except for the US -- and those who fabricated this evidence should listen and learn. Everybody else in the world uses date, month, year."[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gertz, Bill. "Iran arms Iraqi insurgents", The Washington Times, February 12, 2007. Retrieved February 12, 2007.
  2. ^ Dareini, Ali Akbar. "Iran Rejects U.S. Charges on Arming Iraq", The Washington Times, February 12, 2007. Retrieved February 12, 2007.
  3. ^ Murphy, Kim. "Iran seen as key to untangling Iraq",Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2007. Retrieved February 15, 2007.
  4. ^ [1] [2]

[edit] External links

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