Iran "calibrates" its war against US in Iraq

NY Times:

The United States has gathered its most detailed evidence so far of Iranian involvement in training and arming fighters in Iraq, officials say, but significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement and the threat it poses to American and Iraqi forces.

Some intelligence and administration officials said Iran seemed to have carefully calibrated its involvement in Iraq over the last year, in contrast to what President Bush and other American officials have publicly portrayed as an intensified Iranian role.

It remains difficult to draw firm conclusions about the ebb and flow of Iranian arms into Iraq, and the Bush administration has not produced its most recent evidence.

But interviews with more than two dozen military, intelligence and administration officials showed that while shipments of arms had continued in recent months despite an official Iranian pledge to stop the weapons flow, they had not necessarily increased.

Iran, the officials said, has shifted tactics to distance itself from a direct role in Iraq since the American military captured 20 Iranian operatives inside Iraq in December 2006 and January 2007. Ten of those Iranians remain in American custody.

Since then, Iran seems to have focused instead on training Iraqi Shiite fighters inside Iran, though the exact number remains unclear. Some officials said only handfuls of fighters at a time had recently trained in Iran. At the same time, Iran has sought to retain political and economic influence over a variety of Shiite factions, not just the most extremist militias, known as “special groups.”

“They don’t want to be identified with activities that might be seen by the international community as illegitimate,” a senior official familiar with the intelligence about Iran said in an interview.

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None of the officials interviewed disputed the notion that Iran sought to undermine American interests in Iraq, but in recent weeks the administration has sought to emphasize the threat by citing new evidence. The interrogations of four Iraqi Shiite militia commanders, for example, have provided new details about the extent of training conducted by the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, officials said.

Still, the officials offered an assessment of Iranian involvement that was more complicated and nuanced than public statements by Mr. Bush and other officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who said at a news conference this week that “what Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen inside Iraq” by providing training and weapons to Shiite fighters.

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The NY Times seems to treasure "nuance" when it comes to enemy activity against the US and its allies. It never acknowledges the 29 year war against the US waged by Iran. That war, too, has been nuanced like someone poking an animal with a long sharp stick but never getting close enough to fear retaliation. We are getting close to that point again and the Times seems to be covering for the Iranian religious bigots who are doing the poking with EFPs and fresh rockets and mortar shells.

Poking aback against Iran would not necessarily provoke an all out conflict, which Iran would clearly lose. Destroying the weapons production facilities would make it more difficult for Iran to supply enemy forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran would probably respond with Hezballah type activities that would be "nuanced" and just low intensity enough not to provoke even harsher retaliation.

The fact is that Iran's low intensity war against the US will continue until there is regime change in Tehran. The people responsible for the Lebanon barracks bombing and the Khobar Towers bombing continue their war today, but they have had less success in Iraq than prior engagements. Their main ally in Iraq, Sadr, has shown himself to be a flip flopper of the first order talking about all out war one day and ordering his forces to maintain a truce the next day. The fact is that in an all out war, he and Iran would be losers in short order.