Skepticism Over Iraq Haunts U.S. Iran Policy

Asked about the "highest levels" charge, Burns replied: "The president . . . did not claim that today. We are not claiming that today."

That was precisely what the military asserted in its Baghdad briefing for reporters Sunday, a secretive session in which no cameras or tape recorders were allowed and no names were given for the speakers.

The charge was that Tehran's operatives were supplying explosive devices to Iraqi Shiites who are killing U.S. troops. Proof was laid out on a table: Iranian-made weapons and copies of false identity cards found on captured agents said to be members of the Quds Force of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

"The Quds Force," a senior defense analyst then explained, "on paper reports to the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In reality, they really report directly to the supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "So the activities that the IRGC Quds Force are conducting in Iraq, we assess, are coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government."

(Although the briefer emphasized that he was referring to Khamenei and not to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bush cited the Iranian president at yesterday's news conference. "Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don't think we know," he said.) The briefer's comments Sunday shifted the focus of a lengthy presentation that had been planned for more than a month. Several media accounts Monday morning noted that no proof had been offered for the "highest levels" charge. "The process fumbled what should be an easy story to tell," one administration official said ruefully.

Controversy grew Monday over reports that the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, had told reporters in Australia that while he knew the weapons were Iranian-made, "I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Frantic telephone calls from Washington to Pace's traveling party ensued. Snow and his counterpart at the State Department, Sean McCormack, were pummeled in daily briefings and directed questions to the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, even as Snow told reporters in Washington he had spoken with Pace and they were on the same page, the general reiterated his view. The discovery of the explosives, Pace said during a news conference in Jakarta, "could not translate to the Iranian government per se is directly involved in doing this."

At another contentious White House briefing, Snow said that he would "push all evidentiary questions to the DNI" -- the director of national intelligence.

The intelligence community, still licking its wounds over faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq, displayed an air of "I told you so" this week and insisted that the Baghdad briefers had gone beyond vetted information.

A senior intelligence official Tuesday offered carefully parsed written guidance he said had been provided to the briefers in Baghdad. "The Qods Force -- a special element of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard . . . -- is involved in providing lethal support to select groups of Shia militants in Iraq. Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of IRGC operations, the IC [intelligence community] assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Qods Force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran."

The distinction was important, the official said. The Baghdad briefer's verbal use of "highest levels" went beyond what the intelligence community had suggested. The "top officials" wording, the official said, better reflected administration knowledge.

In Baghdad yesterday, a U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, tried to clarify, saying the intent of the news conference was not to talk about who had authorized Iranian arms shipments: "This is about the fact that American forces . . . are being killed by munitions and weaponry that are being produced in Iran."

Correspondent Joshua Partlow in Baghdad contributed to this report.