War of Words
Iranian weapons are killing U.S. troops. But when officials blamed Iran's leaders, they fell into a credibility gap
It should have been a pretty straightforward case: Shiite militias are using Iranian weapons to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. On that, the evidence is clear. But when unnamed officials at a hastily convened briefing in Baghdad went a step further, accusing Iranian officials "at the highest levels" of funneling a particularly deadly form of roadside bomb to the Shiite militias, it raised more questions than it answered. For one thing, while the analysts laid out detailed evidence that the armor-piercing "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs, originated in Iran, they offered nothing to support the allegation of Iranian government involvement.
Confusing matters further, several senior U.S. officials-including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, Gen. William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, and even President Bush-made a point of walking back from the accusation. "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," Pace told the Voice of America, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."
In Washington and other capitals, many were left questioning the allegations and wondering aloud what, exactly, the Bush administration was hoping to achieve. Was this a prelude to stronger action against Iran or simply a clumsy warning to the regime to stop its support of Shiite militias? The Bush White House ran smack into a growing credibility gap of its own making-a hangover from its handling of intelligence regarding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the invasion. It spent the rest of the week trying to explain its intentions.
The controversy's timing was, at best, inconvenient. Last week, the House of Representatives was engaged in a marathon debate over Bush's "surge strategy" (Page 25). Bush struggled to turn the nation's attention back to his long-awaited security crackdown in Baghdad, but at a rare press conference, the questions kept returning to Iran.
Back in Baghdad, military officials insisted the briefing was not a prelude to a new war but a simple matter of force protection. "We need these actions to stop," said Caldwell. But to explain the ill-fated decision to present the Iran intelligence anonymously in Baghdad, some Pentagon officials pointed to what they call the new Powell doctrine: Don't get stuck being the fall guy for the administration's intelligence claims. (This is a nod to the discredited case that former Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the United Nations about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.) "Nobody wants to be Powell. He could have been president, and there was no one more credible in 2002," says a senior Pentagon official, of the decision to withhold the identities of the briefers. "That sends a big signal. Powell is now essentially derided as a tool of the administration."
The briefing, originally planned about two weeks earlier, was delayed by an arduous review process. The intelligence on EFPs was widely vetted in Washington before it was delivered in Baghdad. Senior military and intelligence officials, along with National Security Council aides and the Director of National Intelligence's Iran mission manager, all reviewed the presentation. U.S. News has learned that additional allegations against Tehran were removed because the intelligence was not conclusive enough. Despite all these efforts, the final briefing (hurriedly scheduled after the talking points leaked to a New York Times reporter) left many confused.
Evidence. Not that all the allegations the administration trotted out last week were questionable. Military and intelligence analysts are in widespread agreement that a key component in EFPs makes it clear that they are coming from Iran. "It's not the sort of thing that is just lying around in mass quantities" in Iraq's inadequately secured ammunition supply points, says one U.S. official in Iraq who tracks improvised explosive devices. "When you have something that can only be made in a few locations and that requires difficult-to-come-by raw materials, it's not that hard to monitor potential local production." Some of the devices found last month were produced as recently as last year.
But these components-about the size of a BlackBerry-are easy to smuggle into the country. And so the evidence about who, exactly, is providing these weapons is less clear. U.S. officials have suggested in several briefings that the EFPs were supplied to the Shiite militias by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's al-Quds Brigade, the elite foreign arm of the Iranian security services. "I think that's still speculative," says a senior military official. "I'm sure it's a combination of al-Quds and a few guys just trying to make a buck."
U.S. intelligence agencies are, largely, sticking by the original allegations that Iranian leaders are complicit. "Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of IRGC operations, the [intelligence community] assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Quds force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran," says a senior intelligence official. A senior military official tells U.S. News that "assess" is the key word: "Assessment is a conclusion one can arrive at after looking at information, but it may not cross the threshold of what you know." Several intelligence sources confirm that the connection to top officials in Tehran is based on good, but largely circumstantial, evidence.
There is little doubt among military officials that the Quds force has been an active presence in Iraq, particularly around the southern oil city of Basra, but elsewhere as well. When U.S. forces grabbed five Iranians with alleged ties to the Revolutionary Guard in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil last month, the roundup reportedly included the third-ranking officer in the Quds force.
But the extent of control that the Iranian government has over the force remains a matter of some dispute. "Al-Quds pretty much does what it wants to do when it wants to do it, and at times it can ride off the reservation," says one former U.S. military official with knowledge of the group. "It's one of those things where it's easier for them to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."
Bush argued last week that proving any direct link between the Iranian government and the EFPs being used against American soldiers in Iraq is less important than the mere fact that it's happening at all. "What's worse," asked Bush, "that the government knew or that the government didn't know?"
But there are internal debates within the administration about the medium- and long-term impacts of going public now (particularly since EFPs first turned up in Iraq in 2004). Does threatening Iran make the regime more inclined to accelerate its current nuclear efforts, for example, or encourage it to be more cautious? Some considered it a simple warning gone awry. "I took the briefing as a shot across the bow," says Jeffrey White, a Middle East expert formerly at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "I think the intent was not to make it a huge deal."
Messages. Ultimately, the briefing sent two strong signals: First, ratcheting up rhetoric against Iran sends a clear message to Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki: Specifically, says a senior Pentagon official, "Don't take support from Iran." The other message is for Iran: Stop your nuclear program "or we'll find an excuse to make you stop"-though the official dismisses war talk.
Despite the new Iran flap, a recent National Intelligence Estimate reaffirmed that it is not "a major driver of violence" in Iraq. Deaths resulting from EFPs account for fewer than 6 percent of all American military fatalities in Iraq (170 versus more than 3,000). The Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq account for most of the American death toll. "Though you don't want to minimize 170 deaths, that's not a heck of a lot over four years," says a former military official who served in Iraq. "Which tells me that EFPs aren't used often by the Shia militia-except on those times when they think Americans are getting too close to someone important."
Military analysts, who believe that most of the EFPs are going to the Mahdi Army led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, are warily tracking his movements. Officials report that Sadr is now in Iran-a development many view with concern. "It could signal several things-the worst one being that there has really been a fracture of the loose command and control of the Mahdi Army," says the former military official. "That the Mahdi Army is breaking apart and we'll have a lot more independent actors out there." In that case, U.S. forces could be facing an enemy even more difficult to track.
This story appears in the February 26, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.