Iran in Iraq
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Iran, Iraq, Military, News
The U.S. military says it has more evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq:
Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.
Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy� to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.
There are three main bits of evidence pointing to Iranian involvement:
1. The sophistication of the attack itself, using English-speaking attackers wearing stolen U.S. uniforms and armed with detailed knowledge of the base’s operations. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d normally expect the Shiite militias to pull off by themselves.
2. Militant testimony. Much of the additional proof is based on what the military says captured militants revealed under interrogation. According to them, the militans all report receiving aid from Iran or working on behalf of Iran. Damning stuff, but this is the weakest link in the chain, because there’s no independent confirmation of the accounts and there’s always the suspicion that “interrogation” actually means “torture” and thus the resulting information is suspect.
3. The fact that one of the captured militants, Ali Mussa DaqDuq, is a senior Hezbollah bombmaker. This is direct evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement. However, it is only indirect evidence of Iranian involvement. It’s always possible to argue that Hezbollah was acting on its own. On the other hand, several observers note that Hezbollah had little to gain from getting involved in Iraq; angering the United States would not help its efforts in Lebanon, and meddling in Iraq would make it seem more like the Iranian puppet it has long denied being.
(continued at Midtopia)
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