Not to Be Trusted

The New Narrative

Karen DeYoung wrote in The Washington Post on Saturday: "Last week's violence in Basra and Baghdad has convinced the Bush administration that actions by Iran, and not al-Qaeda, are the primary threat inside Iraq, and has sparked a broad reassessment of policy in the region, according to senior U.S. officials.

"Evidence of an increase in Iranian weapons, training and direction for the Shiite militias that battled U.S. and Iraqi security forces in those two cities has fixed new U.S. attention on what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday called Tehran's 'malign' influence, the officials said.

"The intensified focus on Iran coincides with diminished emphasis on al-Qaeda in Iraq as the leading justification for an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq. . . .

"U.S. military officials said that much of the plentiful, high quality weaponry the militia used in Basra and in rocket attacks against the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government are located, was recently manufactured in Iran. At the same time, the militia's improved targeting and tactics indicated stepped-up Iranian training. . . .

"Despite earlier indications that Iranian backing for Iraqi armed groups and the flow of Iranian arms have waned, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that 'this action in Basra was very convincing that indeed they haven't.' Basra 'gave us much more insight into their involvement in many activities.'"

Where's the proof? Who knows? Also left unaddressed is the widespread assumption that the Iranians actually supported both sides in the recent Shiite-on-Shiite conflict. And then there's the fact that it was Iran that brought both sides together to end hostilities.

Rather than being a cause for celebration by American officials, Iran's brokering of the cease-fire "added to U.S. consternation," DeYoung reports. "Administration officials worried that Iran appeared in control of events in Iraq, while the United States seemed weak and uninformed."

Yochi J. Dreazen reported in Saturday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "Senior U.S. defense officials accused Iran of stepping up its shipments of weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, underscoring a marked hardening of American rhetoric about Iran in recent days.

"Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian support for the Shiite-extremist groups had grown, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates said for the first time that he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the shipments.

"'I find it inconceivable that he does not know,' Mr. Gates told reporters at the Pentagon, adding that Iran was playing a 'malign' role in Iraq."

Hope Yen reported for the Associated Press on Sunday: "With al-Qaida's influence diminishing in Iraq, U.S. troops have much work to do in stemming Iranian support for militias, President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday.

"'Iran is very active in the southern part of Iraq. They are training Iraqis in Iran who come into Iraq and attack our forces, Iraqi forces, Iraqi civilians. There are movements of equipment. There's movements of funds,' Stephen Hadley said. 'So we have illegal militia in the southern part of the country that really are acting as criminal elements that are pressing the people down there.'"