Official: Lawmakers See Iran Explosives

MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- U.S. military commanders in Iraq have shown members of Congress explosive devices that bear Iranian markings as evidence Tehran is supplying Iraqi militants with bombs, a senior U.S. government official said Saturday.

One of the lawmakers, independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, said he has seen some of the evidence, though he would not be specific. "I'm convinced from what I've seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers," said Lieberman, who was attending an international security conference in Munich.  ...

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Evidence on Iran is On the Way 
John Hinderaker

We've been talking for a while about the accumulating evidence tying Iran to some of the deadliest munitions being used in Iraq, as well as to the training of some Iraqi insurgents. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Gates said that the U.S. has evidence of Iranian involvement:

Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration's first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

This is old news, of course. What's interesting is that the administration has been working for some time on assembling a dossier to demonstrate Iran's role:

National security officials in Washington and Iraq have been working for weeks on a presentation intended to provide evidence for Bush administration claims of what they say are Iran's meddlesome and deadly activities.

Officials say the materials - which in their classified form include slides and some two inches of documents - provide evidence of Iran's role in supplying Iraqi militants with highly sophisticated and lethal improvised explosive devices and other weaponry. Among the weapons is a roadside bomb known as an "explosively formed penetrator," which can pierce the armor of Abrams tanks with nearly molten-hot charges. One intelligence official said the U.S. is "fairly comfortable" it knows where the explosives came from. ...

According to the Associated Press, release of this evidence is being delayed in order to make sure that it is as accurate as possible, and to ensure that intelligence sources and methods are not compromised. Both are laudable objectives, of course. Still, I can't help wondering whether the administration is delaying its release of the evidence because, once the facts are laid before the American people, it will be hard to defer a decision on what to do about it. ...

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Look For The Mullah Label 
Ed Morrissey

American officials have begun to get closer to revealing the evidence of Iranian involvement in attacks on US troops in Iraq. Several sources within the Pentagon have talked with reporters about the issue, informing them of the details, including the manufacture of specific weapons found on insurgents. The New York Times leads with the story this morning:

[...]

The Times reports that some of their sources have previously voiced skepticism over linking Iran directly to the insurgencies. They have now changed their minds and spoke in depth about the connections between Teheran and the terrorists in Iraq, and the deaths they have caused directly or indirectly to American troops. These intel sources also claim that Hezbollah has been active inside Iraq in at least a support role for the Shi'ite militias and insurgents, another fingerprint of Iran and the mullahcracy.

So far, all of this information has been closely held by the Bush administration. The Times reports that this will change this weekend. The White House plans on presenting evidence gleaned from the controversial raid in Irbil of the active support Iran has given terrorists in Iraq. That support comes in the forms of training, financing, and manufacturing of the weapons themselves. Iran smuggles the materiel across the border at night and Iranian agents apparently handle the distribution. The raid on Irbil intended to disrupt this distribution channel for Iranian control of the insurgencies. ...

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Closely related, I hope: Mullah Surprise!

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Gates: Bombs Tie Iran to Iraq Extremists

MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration's first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

While the Bush administration and military officials have repeatedly said Iranians have been tied to terrorist bombings in Iraq, they have said little about evidence to bolster such claims, including any documents and other items collected in recent raids in Iraq. 

National security officials in Washington and Iraq have been working for weeks on a presentation intended to provide evidence for Bush administration claims of what they say are Iran's meddlesome and deadly activities.

The materials _ which in their classified form include slides and some two inches of documents _ provide evidence of Iran's role in supplying Iraqi militants with highly sophisticated and lethal improvised explosive devices and other weaponry. Among the weapons is a roadside bomb known as an "explosively formed penetrator," which can pierce the armor of Abrams tanks with nearly molten-hot charges. One intelligence official said the U.S. is "fairly comfortable" it knows where the explosives came from.

The Iran dossier also lays out alleged Iranian efforts to train Iraqis in military techniques. ...

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Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.

Because the weapon can be fired from roadsides and is favored by Shiite militias, it has become a serious threat in Baghdad. Only a small fraction of the roadside bombs used in Iraq are explosively formed penetrators. But the device produces more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.

Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile. The officials said they were willing to discuss the issue to respond to what they described as an increasingly worrisome threat to American forces in Iraq, and were not trying to lay the basis for an American attack on Iran. ...

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See next: Iranian bombs killing Americans in Iraq -- Update