Smoking guns: Iranians backing the Shiite militias in Iraq
Bryan Preston

ABC has the exclusive:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2006 — U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. “There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval,” says a senior official. ...

This news should be a call to arms for this country to unite and deal decisively with Iran. Instead it will be either ignored or downplayed by the left, until a conspiracy theory can be constructed to explain it away. Those pushing to talk with Iran over Iraq probably won’t change their thinking.

Whether we like it or not, we’re fighting a regional war that happens to be taking place mostly in Iraq. King Abdullah’s “three civil wars” are the various theaters of that war in the Middle East (there are others), as Islamists attempt to defeat us in Iraq while seizing Lebanon in order to destroy Israel. ...

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Does This Mean War?
Ed Morrissey

Someone at the Pentagon has let the cat out of the bag -- and apparently, it's a Persian. Citing "US officials", ABC News reported earlier today that the US has smoking-gun evidence that Iran has supplied the insurgents in Iraq with sophisticated weaponry used to attack American soldiers:

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I find the timing of this revelation very interesting. We know the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group has prepared its recommendations, because they've been busy leaking them a week ahead of the deadline. We know that they will urge the Bush administration to reverse almost thirty years of foreign policy and engage Teheran in direct negotiations regarding security for Iraq. We also know that the Joint Chiefs have already decided to oppose the main thrusts of the ISG.

Now, suddenly, ABC News finds out that the Pentagon has found the Imam Label on insurgent weapons. Does it appear to anyone else that someone at the Department of Defense has decided to pre-empt the ISG and its call for negotiated surrender to state-sponsored terrorism?

We heard the rumor last week that Hezbollah had been training Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, perhaps hosting as many as 2,000 militia fighters. ABC adds to that as well, revealing that the Pentagon believes Sadr to have over 40,000 fighters in his irregulars, much higher than anyone supposed before this. The Iranians have built up quite a force in Iraq, and now that we're on the verge of hearing from the ISG, we now find out that the Iranians have been conducting a proxy war against us. Not that the news surprises those who have followed the situation, but the extent of their success is worrisome.

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If the report is true and the Iranians have been directly supplying the insurgents with the materiel that has killed and wounded many American soldiers, then we have to finally acknowledge that the war on terror has evolved into a confrontation with terrorism's leading state sponsor.  ...