Iran suspected of supplying Sunni terrorist too

NY Times:

Arms that American military officials say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-majority area, the chief spokesman for the American military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news conference.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that detainees in American custody had indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian intelligence service were training Shiite extremists in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees and did not say why they would have that information.

“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat near a table crowded with weapons that he said the military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.

The weapons were found in a mostly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, he said, a rare instance of the American military suggesting any link between Iran and the Sunni insurgency. It has recently suggested a link with Shiite militants in Iraq.

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The weapons displayed on Wednesday were more conventional, and officials pointed to markings on them that they said indicated Iranian manufacture.

The display came as the military released figures showing that 26 percent fewer civilians were killed and wounded in Baghdad from Jan. 1 through March 31 than during the previous quarter, as the new American effort to secure Baghdad got under way, but that nationwide civilian casualties had risen.

From February to March the number of dead and wounded nationwide, including civilians and members of Iraqi and American security forces, rose 10 percent, according to the military report.

“What does that mean?” General Caldwell said. “It means we still have a lot of work to do.”

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The weapons may be coming through Syria. The moralistic mullahs are amoral enough to be supplying Sunni insurgents to advance Iran's objective of keeping Iraq in chaos. Iran is also protecting some al Qaeda operatives including bin Laden's son.

The casualty figure reflect some of the success of the surge and how the enemy is trying to adapt by attacking and killing non combatants outside the surge area. These war crimes of the enemy should be harder to sustain. He is off his turf and will be easier to spot by locals. In Tal Afar, his actions should make it harder to give flour away as a lour to murder non combatants.