From www. kentimmerman.com
From www. kentimmerman.com
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Evidence
of Iran Arms Support Was Well Known
Monday, Feb. 12,
2007
WASHINGTON -– Evidence that Iran was providing weapons,
explosives, cash, and orders to Iraqi insurgents was well known to
the U.S. and Iraqi governments for many months, but fear of a
political backlash in Washington delayed official comment until
Sunday, when the U.S. military released its report in Baghdad.
More significant than the U.S. "dossier" released in Baghdad was the
reaction in Tehran, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has
"panicked" as the U.S. steps up military pressure on Iranian networks
in Iraq, and is now seeking to scale back the harsh rhetoric of
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian sources tell NewsMax.
Iranian-backed militiamen were arrested in September carrying
Iranian-made mortars and other equipment during sectarian fighting
near Khan Beni Saad, a predominantly Sunni area 20 miles northeast of
Baghdad.
Photographs obtained by NewsMax at the time showed that the
militiamen had been equipped with an electronic mapping and targeting
device bearing the stamp of the Iranian Defense Industries
Organization —Electronics and Communications Industries
Group.
An instruction manual for the device bore the same
markings.
Multinational Forces in Iraq have been compiling evidence on
Iran's involvement in the sectarian fighting in Iraq for many
months.
They have presented evidence to visiting U.S. congressional
delegations visiting Baghdad that insurgents have begun using a new
type of improvised explosive device equipped with specially-designed
"shaped charges" manufactured in Iran, congressional sources
said.
By mid-January, after U.S. and Iraqi forces captured five
Iranians in Irbil, they compiled a 200-page dossier on Iran's efforts
to undermine the Iraqi government. But National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley reportedly told the intelligence community to scale
back the document's conclusions, for fear they would be used to
accuse the Bush administration of planning war with Iran.
"Don't expect that this report will set the president's hair on
fire about Iran," a White House adviser cautioned shortly before the
report was released.
Nevertheless, Democrats jumped on the watered-down report
during appearances on the Sunday talk circuit yesterday, questioning
the intelligence and suggesting that the administration had
"doctored" the evidence in a new "rush to war."
"I'm worried about that," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn.,
said on CBS News' "Face the Nation." Said Dodd, "That's how we got
into the mess in Iraq."
Dodd, who is exploring a run for the Democratic nomination for
president in 2008, argued that the Bush administration was
responsible for tensions with Iran, and that "until we engage them
some way on a multiple of issues, including this one, it's only going
to get worse."
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sounded a similar theme on CNN,
accusing the administration of engaging "in a drumbeat with Iran that
is much like the drumbeat that they did with Iraq. We're going to
insist on accountability," he said.
Iran's Supreme Leader and top Revolutionary Guards officials
"panicked" after the Jan. 10, 2007, raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces on
an Iranian intelligence headquarters in Irbil, in northern Iraq,
according to Iranian exiles and other sources who have ties to the
Tehran regime.
"In Tehran, they began referring to the United States as
mar-rouye domesh vastadeh — the Cobra standing on his tail,"
says Shahriar Ahy, an Iranian-born political analyst who helped build
the post-war broadcasting network in Iraq.
Shortly afterwards, Khamenei set up two Top Secret blue-ribbon
commissions, fearful that the policies of President Ahmadinejad were
leading the nation inadvertently to war.
One of the commissions is examining the damage done by
Ahmadinejad to Iran's economy, where inflation is soaring and
unemployment officially now tops 20 percent and tops 30 percent by
unofficial estimates.
A national security and intelligence review board led by
Khamenei's son Mojtaba and his chief of staff, Akbar Hejazi, is
looking at Iran's nuclear face-off with the international community
and its aggressive posture in Iraq.
The 15-member commission includes top Revolutionary Guards
"professionals" who have broken with Ahmadinejad because of his
"amateurism," Iranian sources told NewsMax.
"It's not that these professionals want to make peace with
America and sing 'Kumbaya' with the opposition," said Shahriar Ahy.
"Rather, they feel that Ahmadinejad has brought in undisciplined
amateurs who are riding roughshod" over their agencies and
"destroying all the work" the professionals have accomplished over
the past 20 years.
The commission has counseled the supreme leader to clip the
president's wings and prevent him from making the type of firebrand
speeches that have become his stock in trade.
Ahmadinejad has announced repeatedly over the past six weeks
that he intended to reveal a "major breakthrough" in Iran's nuclear
program at a speech commemorating the 28th anniversary of the 1979
revolution. But when he gave that speech on Sunday, the only
announcement he made was to offer to resume negotiations with the
Europeans, albeit while still refusing to accede to European demands
that Iran first suspend its nuclear programs before any talks
begin.
The committee also urged Khamenei to dispatch National Security
Adviser Ali Larijani to this weekend's meeting of international
security officials in Munich, to present a similar offer to renew
negotiations with the Europeans over Iran's nuclear programs.
Ahmadinejad's troubles are just beginning.
Earlier this month, the regime's two major factions, led by former
presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, joined
forces to call for Ahmadinejad to be removed from office.
Both former presidents are clerics who head rival groups of
clerics, respectively the Militant Clergy Association and the
Militant Clerics League, which control the levers of power within
Iran's Islamic regime.
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.