About Iran

To me, the only epistemic value of knowing that Michael Gordon says official sources say Iranian-supplied weapons "accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces" last month is that whatever the truth of the matter is to establish a theoretical maximum on Iranian culpability in the death of American soldiers. The administration is lying (for them not to be lying would be unprecedented) and Gordon is passing on what his sources tell him.

As a policy matter, looking at the Iranian support issue tends to highlights how pointless it is to get one's hopes raised by such minor signs of progress as may or may not be thought to exist in Iraq. Iran is charged with supplying a bit more than 100 explosive-formed penetrator bombs to Iraqi militants per month. Iran is also a bit of a rinky-dink third world country. But even they clearly could be providing a lot more weaponry than that were they so inclined. Hezbollah's armaments are, for example, much more sophisticated than that. If the Iranians ever were to reach the conclusion that the US were in danger of achieving its goals of creating a stable Iraq happy to play host to large US military installations and serve as an anti-Iranian bulwark in the region, Iran could easily step up its assistance and then you're back to square one.

The issue here, then, really isn't where, exactly, these EFPs come from and why. The issue is whether you think it serves US interests to try to reach an accommodation with Iran so they we can fight terrorism by trying to fight the al-Qaeda terrorists who want to come here and kill or, or whether you think it serves US interests to continue picking unprovoked fights with tangential adversaries. But before you pick what's behind door number two, just keep in mind that a US-Iranian escalation cycle will certainly lead things to get much, much worse over the short and medium terms.

Comments

Yes, but don't you see? if we bomb their asses, they'll stop this mischief and cower before us! It's a sure thing!

Posted by Joe Lieberman | August 8, 2007 9:50 AM

Its all a matter of what the real end goal for the neo-cons is. Most likely they don't have a common end goal. The Likudites are all about fighting Israel's wars for her. The Cheneyites are all about grabbing control of world oil supplies at the point of a gun, oderint dum metuant.

Both sides agree that they would really, really like to have a huge military base that allows them to control the region. Their conditions for using that power are different, but both want to establish the ability to control. And both are absolutely sure that the lives of a thousand US troops per year are an acceptable price to pay for their base.

In the process they have blundered into a situation where they have established Iran as the paramount regional power. Iran makes a million cars a year, they have a real industrial base. In terms of military power they are the equivalent of a France or a Germany. Even rinky-dink countries can field a second rank military.

Bush is the Brezhniev of the USA, the incompetent idiot who drove the mighty superpower into the dirt. Far from demonstrating the might of the US the neo-cons have reduced the US to the point where it is no longer an invincible force when acting unilateraly. The Bush doctrine and the Brezhniev doctrine are essentially the same. Bush's war in Iraq is as big a fiasco as Brezhniev's in Afghanistan.

Posted by PHB | August 8, 2007 10:01 AM

Let me see if I have the Bush/neocon argument correct. It goes something like this:

2002: Iraq is the most dire threat to global peace because Iraq is a highly sophisticated country with the scientific and technical capacity to make all types of horrific weapons of mass distruction up to and including nuclear bombs.

2007: The ordinary EFPs that are blowing up troops around Iraq must be the result of nefarious Iranian meddling because...well...because the Iraqis just wouldn't be able to make them themselves seeing as how they are "sophisticated" bombs that have been "shaped" to penetrate.

Posted by Kent | August 8, 2007 10:19 AM

What I would like to see is the evidence that Iran is supplying these weapons, rather than just people in Iran. Black market weapons-running occurs all over the world, even in the United States, and is not necessarily a reflection of state policy.

And assuming for the sake of argument that Iranian nationals are supplying Shiite militias with these weapons, I would like to see the evidence that (a) they are doing so for political as opposed to crass financial reasons, and (b) if the reasons are political, they are supplying the weapons in order to attack the US. It seems plausible to me that the chief purpose of any weapons supplied to Shiite militias is to help those militias defend themselves against their Sunni Arab enemies - you know ... the guys we are mainly fighting in this war.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 8, 2007 10:24 AM

Time magazine, of all places, just carried a long article - Enemies Unseen by Mark Kukis -
examining one of the U.S. military's claims about Iranian support for the killing of American soldiers. Not surprisingly, the Iranian claim is made to disguise what probably really happened: the U.S. trained an Iraqi police force in Karbala. There was a liason established with American troops. The likely story is that it was members of this Iraqi police force that killed the five American soldiers bushwacked in Karbala on January 20. Summary grafs:

"The military has struggled to affix responsibility for the Karbala murders. U.S. commanders have accused the Quds Force, a paramilitary organization run by members of Iran's security establishment, of being behind the operation. On July 2 in Baghdad, the military revealed it was holding Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese national who was captured in Basra in March. He is a senior operative of Hizballah (the Lebanese Shi'ite militia supported by the Quds Force), and officials say he has admitted to involvement in the attack.

U.S. officials, who met their Iranian counterparts in Baghdad on July 24, have used the Karbala killings as evidence that Iran is sponsoring attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. But the full story of what happened that night may be even more tangled and disturbing, raising questions about the loyalties of some of the Iraqis whom U.S. troops are risking their lives to protect and support. An internal Army investigation into the attack reviewed by TIME, in addition to interviews with U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, suggest that the abduction and murders were carried out with the knowledge and complicity of Iraqi Shi'ite police who only hours earlier had been working alongside U.S. soldiers--and may have involved local officials loyal to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Karbala incident highlights the dilemmas facing the U.S. as it weighs whether and how to redeploy its troops from the front lines of the war. In some cases, the Iraqi security forces being trained and equipped by the U.S. retain ties to anti-American militia who could turn on U.S. troops as they depart. (On July 13, U.S. troops killed six Iraqi police in a raid targeting a rogue police commander.)"

Michael Gordon is, of course, a tool.

Posted by roger | August 8, 2007 10:37 AM

EFPs, specifically, are not something that would help the Shiites against the Sunnis; they are useful as a weapon against heavy armor, which is to say US forces, at least at this time. But frankly 100 EFPs per month strikes me as a fairly tiny level of support for a country of Iran's capabilities; in fact I imagine that non-state actors within Iran could maintain that kind of supply.

Posted by bbartlog | August 8, 2007 10:53 AM

"Iran could easily step up its assistance and then you're back to square one. "

I don't think Iran has the capacity to top this supplier of arms to the insurgents:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6933569.stm

Posted by Njorl | August 8, 2007 11:04 AM

What I would like to see is the evidence that Iran is supplying these weapons, rather than just people in Iran. Black market weapons-running occurs all over the world, even in the United States, and is not necessarily a reflection of state policy.

Exactly. I worked in the Peace Corps in Guatemala in the mid 80s during the time that an active Marxist insurgency was active in the country. Actually there were 3 or 4 separate Marxist insurgencies in different parts of the country. In any event, there was an American arms embargo in Guatemala due to extreme human rights violations. In response, Israel was supplying weapons to Guatemala (with the wink and nod of the Reagan Administration) and the Israelis even built an arms manufacturing plant in Guatemala where Israeli Galil combat rifles were manufactured.

The Marxist insurgents, on the other hand favored US-made M-16 rifles which were indirectly supplied by the CIA. How so? At that time the CIA was pouring arms into neighboring Honduras to supply the US-backed Nicaraguan Contras and was pouring arms into neighboring El Salvador which was fighting its own insurgency. A large number of the US-supplied arms to the Contras and El Salvadoran Army just vanished into the black market and re-emerged in the hands of Marxist insurgents in Guatemala.

What that meant in 1985 is that if you were in rural Guatemala and ran into a roadblock manned by a bunch of kids in fatigues and they were carrying US-made weapons, they were Marxist rebels. However if they were carrying Israeli weapons they were Government troops. That was, of course a more civilized time and place than Iraq as foreigners were pretty much not bothered by either side.

Posted by Kent | August 8, 2007 11:06 AM

Look, I honestly don't think Iran is stupid enought to send these weapons officially into Iraq. What's happening is probably what always happens when weapons and money move in streams past human beings. One of those human beings decides to dip into the stream and suddenly a black market is born. At the most, our guys may have shown that some of these weapons have come from Iraq, but haven't proven an official Iranian sanction. When a few of the 190,000 AK-47s and pistols we've lost track of in Iraq show up in the hands of terrorists, would we consider a critic honest if they suggested that Americans were actively supporting terror groups? I think not.

Posted by nitpicker | August 8, 2007 11:22 AM

Isn't the buried lede in this story the admission that these bombs "are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants"?

Previously, the administration had fudged this fact in an attempt to imply that Iran was supplying Sunni insurgents and even al Qaeda. Military sources would always refer cryptically to "extremist groups," never Shiitte extremist groups.

But no, as one would expect, these bombs are going to Shiite militias, most of whom are allied with the Malaki government that we're supporting.

Posted by A.L. | August 8, 2007 12:00 PM

"The administration is lying (for them not to be lying would be unprecedented) and Gordon is passing on what his sources tell him."

I think at this point the only way for the administration to get any credibility with lefty bloggers would be to higher Scott Beauchamp as a spokesman, and have him preface every press briefing with a disparaging comment about U.S. troops, to prove his veracity.

Imagine if Scott Beauchamp took to the lecturn in the White House press briefing room and said,

"When I was in Iraq, there was a contractor chick with really bad acne. We mocked her mercilessly until she got an eating disorder (war can make you do such things). Oh, by the way: evidence suggests that explosively formed projectiles that are killing so many U.S. troops are coming in from Iran."

Posted by Juan | August 8, 2007 12:22 PM

Juan, you got that right, dude. The traitors love Beauchamp. But you underestimate his gigantic effect. When not trying to vilify the American military, sources have reported that he has opened IED factories nationwide in Iran. In fact, if the MSM wasn't run by Islamofascists and had hired true reporters who are out there every day in Iraq, seeking the truth, like Micheal Yon, God bless him, this story would break wide open. Apparently, there are now 300 of these factories up and running, plus, of course, the Beauchamp IED "we blow you up for less" factory outlets conveniently located on Highway 10, on the Mad Mullah shopping center exit outside Teheran. Of course, I'm not even including his role as cohost on the popular weekly show, "Who Wants to Wipe Israel Off the Map", hosted by Ahmadinejad, where he' s developed quite a fake chuckle to great Ahmadinejad's tired opening monologues. Sorry, Ahmadinejad's no Jay Leno!

If only we could get the truth out about these things! Luckily, the MSM is history. When the GOP sweeps next year, the new media giant will, of course, be Pyjamas Media, and we will get the truth so much quicker. Semper fi, buddy!

Posted by roger | August 8, 2007 1:25 PM

I hope to be America's ambassador to Iran someday, so let me say on behalf of Iranians that Iran is not a rinky-dink country.

And trust me, don't ever say that to an Iranian. They're more than a little proud of themselves.

Posted by Steve W. | August 8, 2007 1:54 PM

Thanks Steve W. As somebody who reads Matt's blog, I can see why Matt would say Iran is a rinky-dink third world country , because the only times it's mentioned in the media is when the dumbass leader says something dumb. But as an Iranian, this bites. Rinky dink ??? Come on Matt, be serious, that's only a notch higher than "primitive" or "backwards". Don't try to write us off the way you write off the Arabs or eastern Europeans (come to think of it, though, I can't see you calling a genuinely shitty country like say Bulgaria rinky-dink ). There are quite a few of us Iranian-Americans, and 25% of us have a Master's or PhD, higher than any ethnicity (except maybe Indian Americans, depending on which statistics you trust). Hell, chances are a good percent of your traffic comes from Iran. Sullivan mentioned a couple months ago that 90% of his readers come from the US, 5% from the UK, and the next biggest group came from IRAN, and he regularly expresses support for the people of Iran. So believe it or not, we're not rinky-dink or backwards, and I know you're at least as smart as Sullivan.

Posted by Yo | August 8, 2007 7:49 PM

Matt - But even they clearly could be providing a lot more weaponry than that were they so inclined. Hezbollah's armaments are, for example, much more sophisticated than that. If the Iranians ever were to reach the conclusion that the US were in danger of achieving its goals of creating a stable Iraq happy to play host to large US military installations and serve as an anti-Iranian bulwark in the region, Iran could easily step up its assistance and then you're back to square one.

No, while it would be "simple" for Iran to escalate and send, say, nerve gas cannisters in, it would also be "simple" for the US to destroy the entire Iranian sea navy and every electric generating station in Iran in about a week if they did.
We (us and the Iranians) are in a dangerous game that countries sometimes play. Sometimes without war, sometimes ending in major or minor open conflict with military slugging it out. Nothing new, why von Clausewitz called war - "diplomacy conducted by other means". For now, both sides accept loss of some of their own as expendables rather than take the lethal game out in the open. (Including the American Lefties busy defending Iran from "malicious stories" about the pure, wonderful Iranians killing the US soldiers the Left "supports so much!" with Iranian EFPs. We have achieved some payback inside Iran (a Pasadan convoy blown up with a huge IED that killed 50) and with Iranian agents inside Iraq that mysteriously "disappeared".

We both have it in our interests to keep it low level for now.

Except a good portion of Iranian leadership are nutty, murderous Muslim fanatics.

( Which sort of ruins the "moral equivalency arguments" of the Left - which go that if the UK having nuclear weapons is not proved to be a problem, then, as all cultures are morally and judgmentally equal under multiculti screed - ergo - Iran having nukes shouldn't be any more of a problem than the UK having them. Except that the Iranian leaders include bloodthirsty religious nutballs...)

Iran can wait to escalate for a pacifist Democratic President (not Hillary Clinton) like Obama, bent on pursuing "the real threat" Pakistan....for the 4-5 surviving 9/11 plotters not dead or in custody.

But my guess is that the irrationals will cross the line and lead to open revolt in Iran with all its neighbors and powerful overseas forces helping out to end the reign of the Ayatollahs.

Or Iran will cross the line militarily, stupidly, in a way that compels us to act.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 8, 2007 8:21 PM

This cartoon is for Chris Ford
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2005/07/current-affairs-truth-of-matter.html

Posted by Arun | August 8, 2007 9:07 PM

If the Iranians ever were to reach the conclusion that the US were in danger of achieving its goals of creating a stable Iraq happy to play host to large US military installations and serve as an anti-Iranian bulwark in the region, Iran could easily step up its assistance and then you're back to square one.

Translated to simpler language - If the Iranians ever were to reach the conclusion that the US was in danger of bringing back the Baathists...

There is no other way Iraq is going to "serve as an anti-Iranian bulwark".

Posted by Arun | August 8, 2007 9:16 PM

It makes me shiver to read this type of commentary. This is why the rightards get away with it.

"The issue is whether you think it serves US interests to try to reach an accommodation with Iran so they we can fight terrorism by trying to fight the al-Qaeda terrorists who want to come here and kill"

The issue is not even close to that. The US has no business at all fucking with Iran. It had no business at all fucking with Iraq either. And your best route to not having to fight terrorists is to stop fucking with places you have no business at all fucking with.

"If the Iranians ever were to reach the conclusion that the US were in danger of achieving its goals of creating a stable Iraq happy to play host to large US military installations and serve as an anti-Iranian bulwark in the region, Iran could easily step up its assistance and then you're back to square one."

Why is a bulwark needed against Iran? Could you please explain? This approach to Iran is utter nonsense! And it always has been. Iran has not had designs on controlling the Middle East for many centuries. Sure, you'll find nationalist Iranians writing about "the Greater Iran" but this is a matter of national pride, not a blueprint for expansion. Iranians are proud of their culture and its influence on the surrounding area. I'm not sure that this is an entirely negative thing. Its endpoint is not necessarily a Shia conquest of the entire Middle East! This view of geopolitics pictures the world as a gaming board, but "bulwarks" and "buffer states" belong to 1907, not 2007.

And the mullahs might be mad, but pushing them into a corner won't make them any saner. Iran will quite likely transition to a more desirable state given time. I'm not sure that trying to push it so fast that it breaks is a good strategy.

Posted by Dr Zen | August 13, 2007 2:30 AM