See previous: Iranian bombs killing Americans in Iraq (Updated, bumped), Iranian bombs killing Americans in Iraq -- Update, Iranian bombs killing Americans in Iraq -- Update 2

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Iran Sends IEDs to Iraq for Peaceful Purposes 
by Scott Ott

(2007-02-12) -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today confirmed U.S. allegations that high-ranking Iranian officials provide Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing explosives, however, Iran’s president said the devices are for peaceful purposes only. ...

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Iran in Iraq
Michelle Malkin

***update: attention, military folks and weapons experts...please help Michael Yon identify a weapon he photographed and which troops he has talked to haven't been able to peg***

The Democrats may not want to hear about Iran, but our troops in Iraq have an earful to say about it. In both formal briefings and informal conversations with soldiers when I was in Baghdad, the subject of Iranians arms and influence constantly cropped up.

One intel officer complained to Bryan Preston and me about the essentially uninterrupted flow of weapons across the southern border.

At FOB Justice, Iranian weaponry weighed heavily on the minds of the officers who had recently lost a colleague killed by an armor-piercing shaped charge--the kind manufactured in Iran.

And last night, I received an e-mail from an Army captain who trains Iraqi security forces northeast of Baghdad:

I have successfully made it back from leave and have been very busy since I have been back but I ran across several stories about weapons being linked back to Iran. I hope that this is something that you address heavily on your blogs. I have a few points I would like to pass off to you since I have know people killed by these weapons, including a close friend that was killed yesterday.

First off, I am appalled but not surprised at quotes from many key Democrats on these “new” reports of Iranian weapons assistance in Iraq (even though anyone above the rank of SGT could have told you Iran was supplying weapons to insurgents over a year ago). The first quote I would like to address comes from the very distinguished Senator and vocal anti-military critic John Kerry, “Every leader in the region and every observer, every expert here in our country, tells us that Iran does not want a complete and total implosion in Iraq.” ...

Andy Cochran has details on the military's briefing regarding evidence of Iran's war against coalition forces in Iraq.

Bill Roggio, who first noted Qods involvement in the Karbala attack, has a thorough rundown here.

The NYSun reports that the military has tied 170 US troop deaths to Iran.

Allah's got video of Diane Sawyer continuing her "Great Terrorists Of The Middle East tour this week with a layover in Tehran to chat with Ahmadinejad."

BBC has a slideshow of the briefing photographs. ...

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Iran arms Iraqi insurgents
By Bill Gertz

Iran is supplying deadly shoulder-fired missiles and armor-piercing bombs to Iraqi insurgents, along with TNT, triggering devices, rockets and other weapons that are killing and injuring hundreds of U.S. and allied troops, a U.S. military intelligence report made public yesterday says.

The detailed briefing report, titled "Iranian Support for Lethal Activity in Iraq," stated that Iranian Misagh-1 portable anti-aircraft missiles were found after a failed attempt to shoot down a plane at Baghdad's airport in 2004.

Disclosure of the Iranian provision of anti-aircraft missiles comes as six U.S. helicopters have been shot down by insurgents in the past three weeks. It is not known whether Iranian missiles were used in the attacks.

The armor-piercing bombs have killed at least 170 American and allied troops in Iraq, defense officials told reporters in Baghdad, where the report was released.

"More than 170 U.S. and coalition troops have been killed by these things, and 620 wounded. There was a significant increase in their use over the past six months," one defense official said.

"The weapons had characteristics unique to being manufactured in Iran. ... Iran is the only country in the region that produces these weapons," said a defense official who briefed reporters in Baghdad, adding that Tehran was using Shi'ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army as a surrogate in Iraq.

The report stated that the Iranians involved in supporting Iraqi extremists are members of the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Tehran's Islamist paramilitary shock troops. The Qods Force is known to back terrorists throughout the Middle East, according to the 16-page report.

A senior defense official said the Iranian terrorist support is "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government." ...

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Snow: "This is clearly a case where people are hyping something up. I don't know how much clearer we can be: we're not getting ready for war in Iran."
Greg Tinti

Consider this an IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT for all the Democrats "people" out there disingenuously claiming that the Bush administration is gearing up for war against Iran. During today's White House press briefing, Tony Snow put it as clearly as he could, over and over, that the US is not in the beginning stages of building the case for war with Ahmadinejad.

No emphasis on anything since the entire excerpt below is worth reading in full.

Q Tony, the senior military officials made this presentation in Baghdad on background about the evidence against Iran active inside Iraq. Can you talk about the significance of that presentation, about its timing, and what it really means in context of the war right now?  ...

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Kerry flip-flop early warning system triggered!
Allahpundit

Incoming:

[S]peaking on ABC’s “This Week” television programme, Senator John Kerry said he has no doubt that “there are weapons flowing across the border” from Iran.

“Nobody questions, those of us who have been to Iraq and in the region know that there are Iranian instigators, agents in Iraq, and that’s happening, there’s no question,” Kerry said.

Like Sparse Matrix says, the official left-wing line on the Iranian IEDs is that they’re phantom weapons concocted by Chimpy as a pretext for carpet-bombing Tehran. Waffles hasn’t gotten the memo yet, so he’ll have to climb down in a few days. Keep an eye out for it. It’ll be good for a laugh when he does. ...

More (Bryan): I know that for our friends on the left there’s a mental block associated with all claims coming from the administration regarding Iranian meddling in Iraq, but Michelle and I heard on the ground in Baghdad, from a Lt Col in intelligence, that Iran has ramped up its support for the militias and insurgents in the past year to 18 months. It’s hard to say just how much of a contribution to the total violence the Iranians are making, but it’s likely significant, both in arms and training. When you have an “uninterrupted flow of weapons” coming in from Iran to Iraq and getting into the hands of the anti-US/anti-Iraq forces, you have a major problem.

The facts about Iran’s meddling in Iraq aren’t coming from the top down in some drive to expand the war; they’re coming from within Iraq and are filtering up toward an administration that has so far been very reluctant to make much noise about it. From what we learned, the troops in Iraq that are aware of the situation find the administration’s slowness to respond both perplexing and frustrating. Their fellow soldiers are dying at the hands of the mullahs, and so far the mullahs are getting away with it.