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O-6: No question about Iran role in violence

A former adviser to the top U.S. general in Iraq said Tuesday there is absolutely no doubt that Iran is supplying arms and training for insurgents who are killing U.S. troops in Iraq and that news organizations should stop using the qualifying word “alleged” to describe it.

“In the case of what Iran is doing in Iraq, it is so damned obvious to anybody who wants to look into it,” said Army Col. H.R. McMaster, speaking at a Washington, D.C., forum at the American Enterprise Institute. Iran’s intention, he said, is to destabilize the Iraqi government despite public pronouncements of support.

“I think it’s fairly clear that what Iran has done over the last year is try to develop a considerable latent capability that it can turn on at short notice,” said McMaster, a veteran of combat command in Iraq who spent the past year as an adviser to Army Gen. David Petraeus.

McMaster also said that the Iraqi thwarting of the recent uprising in Basra, which officials have said involved significant Iranian backing, may have spoiled a larger regional destabilization effort.

It is possible, McMaster said, “that this bold, very quick action by the prime minister in Basra foiled what was to be, perhaps, a much larger and coordinated effort — maybe even coordinated with efforts in other places in the region, like what’s been happening right now in Lebanon.”

The Iraqi military response to the March militia uprising in Basra, ordered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was initially described as an ineffective failure. But his firing of ineffectual commanders was followed by tactical success and a ceasefire, and is said to have enhanced his status.

McMaster’s comments echoed the April remarks of Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who said the Basra operation “revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability.” Iranian ordnance and training support for Shiite insurgents in Iraq, he said, “continues to kill coalition and Iraqi personnel.

“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago,” Mullen said. “It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way.”

U.S. military officials have long charged Iran with supplying arms, such as the deadly roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, to Iraqi Shiite insurgents. In February 2007, officials in Baghdad unveiled photographs of ordnance they said was stamped with Iranian serial numbers and smuggled into Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. Reporters were told the bombs had taken more than 170 American lives.

McMaster repeated those charges, adding that Iran has also directed assassination operations and trained Iraqis to perform them, using weapons ranging from roadside bombs to sniper rifles.

Iran has repeatedly denied providing such support and has denounced U.S. statements about its involvement with Iraqi Shiites. McMaster said the Iranian actions belie those words.

Iran, he said, has “armed and trained a militia that has been attacking the very government they ostensibly support. And this is not just something in Basra. This is last year. This is in Nasiriyah, this is in Samarra, this is in Diwaniya, this is in Amara. And it was in Karbala on August 26 and 27 of last year, and now again in Basra.

“So I think it’s very obvious what they’re doing. I think it’s very obvious to Iraqis, certainly. The Iraqis I’ve spoken to are incensed about it. And I think it’s no longer ‘alleged’.”

U.S. and Iranian officials have held talks on improving security inside Iraq, but those talks have been cut off. Iraq recently sent a delegation to Iran for similar discussions, but returned saying there was no “conclusive evidence” of militia support.