New Iranian arms found in Iraq

Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary.

Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The U.S. plans to publicize the weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.

The allegations, which couldn't be independently verified, mark a further hardening of U.S. rhetoric on Iran, which senior American officials now describe as the greatest long-term threat to Iraq.

This month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian support for Shiite extremist groups had grown. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said for the first time that he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the shipments.

Iran has long denied that its government knowingly funneled weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militants there. It has derided the U.S. claims as propaganda. Several senior U.S. military officials said the weapons caches would undercut the Iranian denials and provide new evidence of continuing Iranian support for Shiite militants across Iraq.

"You can see the manufacturing dates right on the armaments themselves," one senior commander in Baghdad said. "These are very clearly weapons that were made in the last month or so."

...

It appears that Iran either lied to the Iraqis about stopping shipments of arms into Iraq, or it can't control its own weapons production process. Neither explanation is helpful to their position.

Iran has been at war with the US for nearly 30 years. It has also been at war with Iraq during most of that period. I suspect that this fresh shipment was sent because Iran's spies learned of the Iraqi offensive against Basra militia associated with Iran. The firing on the Green Zone that erupted when the offensive got underway suggest it was a planned response by Iran's allies in Baghdad.

What Iran has done is unite the Iraqis in ways that we had only hoped to. Finding these arms will only further unite them. The timing of the fast boat threat on a US controlled ship in the last day suggest an attempt to escalate tensions in the region. It looks like Iran is up to something.

Hat tip to Confederate Yankee.