In February, the Pentagon held a press conference to provide evidence to support months of claims that Iran had been supporting attacks upon American troops in Iraq. President Bush had claimed that "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops." Government officials said that weapons were being smuggled into Iraq by an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard known as Quds Force on orders "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government." But at the press conference, the defense analyst present acknowledged the inconclusiveness of the evidence, noting that such conclusions were based on "inference" and that "The smoking gun of an Iranian standing over an American with a gun, it's never going to happen."
At the heart of the controversy was the "explosively formed penetrator", or EFP, an explosive device that projects a slug of metal when it explodes. According to the government and media, these weapons have been provided to Iraqis by Iran. This was admittedly a conclusion based upon the assumptions that the components for these weapons could not be manufactured in Iraq and that they must have been provided to Iraqis with the knowledge of the Iranian government. On one hand, this conclusion assumes Iraqis (whom we were told prior to the invasion were on the verge of constructing a nuclear bomb) would not be capable of producing the necessary components, and on the other that foreign-made components could not be purchased, either openly or on the black market, without the knowledge and blessing of the government in the country where they were manufactured. Both assumptions are, needless to say, highly questionable.
In the latest manifestation of the same story, a New York Times headline tells us that "Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.'s", at least according to the U.S. government. The article was based on a Pentagon press conference in which Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner detailed the extent of Iran's alleged involvement in what the Times called "the most specific allegation of Iranian involvement in an attack that killed American troops".
Bergner claimed that "The Iranian Quds Force is using Lebanese Hezbollah essentially as a proxy, as a surrogate in Iraq" in order to destabilize Iraq and attack U.S. forces. The Times noted that while earlier briefings focused "on accusations about an Iranian role focused on technical analyses of arms said to have been supplied by Iran to Shiite militias in Iraq, including explosively formed penetrators, some critics said the evidence was circumstantial and charged that the Americans appeared to be offering a new rationale for maintaining or increasing the military commitment in Iraq." The Pentagon was trying to present that "smoking gun" image of "an Iranian standing over an American with a gun". But this is as much examination into the views and skepticism of "some critics" that the Times was willing to give.
According to the Pentagon, information upon which the newest claim is based was "drawn from interrogations of three men". One of the men, Bergner claimed, was a Lebanese Hezbollah agent. The other two, so we have been told, were Iraqis working as agents for the Iranian Quds Force. Bergner for some reason felt it necessary to stress that this information was not extracted from these individuals by means of torture: "We don't torture. We follow scrupulously the interrogation techniques in the Army's new field manual which forbids torture and has the force of law."
Of course, the truth of this statement depends upon how one defines "torture", differentiated in international law from "inhuman or degrading treatment", which the U.S. does do, including the use of "stress positions", sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and other interrogation methods of dubious legality and questionable morality.
General Bergner, the Pentagon spokesman, claimed that the Hezbollah agent had "helped the Quds Force in training Iraqis inside Iran" and that these groups had been responsible for violence in Iraq. "I think the reality of this is that they're killing American forces, they're killing Iraqis, they're killing Iraqi security forces, and they are disrupting the stability in Iraq." Again, of course, it's not bad when we do it. That goes without saying.
Bergner went further, adding that "the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity." Of course, no evidence was provided to support any of these claims, and the public is expected to take the word of government spokespersons at face value. Hezbollah reportedly rejected the claims, and Iran responded by calling Bergner's story "fabricated and ridiculous". The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said, "It has been four and a half years that U.S. officials have sought to cover up the dreadful situation in Iraq, which is a result of their mistakes and wrong strategies, by denigrating and blaming others."
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