Iran decides to deny fact of involvment in Iraq

CNN:

An Iraqi delegation that arrived in Tehran on Wednesday confronted Iranian officials with "evidence" that Iran is smuggling weapons and explosive devices into Iraq and training Iraqi militants, charges that the Iranians vehemently denied, an Iraqi politician said Saturday.

"The Iranian side was hurt" by these allegations, Haidar al-Abadi said.

Al-Abadi is a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance and a member of al-Maliki's Dawa party.

He said Saturday that the five-member delegation presented the Iranians with evidence of "weapon and explosive device smuggling, and the existence of training camps for Iraqi militants in Iran."

The Iraqis also supplied "proof that most of the Basra outlaw leadership had fled into Iran" after a military operation that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched this year against Shiite militias in the southern city, al-Abadi said.

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The Iranian officials "completely denied ... training, financing and arming" militant groups in Iraq, al-Abadi said.

They maintained that Iran controls its border with Iraq and that weapons are not smuggled into the neighboring country. The Iranians also said they take in Iraqis who are seeking refuge, al-Abadi said.

He said the Iranians insisted that the weapons and explosives are already in Iraq and suggested that others are trying to stir up trouble between the two countries by forging weapons with Iranian markings.

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It appears that Iran has chosen the big lie as it response to photographs of captured weapons that are clearly Iranian and have Iranian markings on them dated this year. Iran has presented Iraq with a bad faith response. But they can't claim that this is some US set up since most of the weapons were found by the Iraqi army as it over ran Mahdi army positions in Basra and Sadr city.

The AP photo in this post shows a collection of Iranian weapons found by the Iraqi army. It is not a small collection.