Iran's message to Iraq... and us
(2005 photo of a billboard on the Iran-Iraq border, via The Arabist.  The face
and quote belong to the late Ayatollah Khomeini.)

Oh, heavens, here we go again.  The U.S. military in Iraq decided it was time for another finger-pointing distraction exercise yesterday, and the New York Times was there:

Arms that American military officials say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-majority area, the chief spokesman for the American military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news conference.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that detainees in American custody had indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian intelligence service were training Shiite extremists in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees and did not say why they would have that information.

. . . The accusation of a link between the Iranian intelligence service and Sunni Arab insurgents is new. The American military has contended in the past that elements in Iran have given Shiite militants powerful Iranian-made roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, and training in their use.

Critics have cast doubt on the American military statements about those bombs, saying the evidence linking them to Iran was circumstantial and inferential.

Yeah, you could say that.  And that's the case again here:

It is unclear from the military’s comments on Wednesday whether it is possible to draw conclusions about how the weapons that the military contends are of Iranian origin might have made their way into a predominantly Sunni area or why Shiite Iran would arm Sunni militants.

There are several possibilities, military officials who were not authorized to speak publicly for attribution said privately. One is that they came through Syria, along a transit route for Iranian-made weapons being funneled to the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah. Another possibility is that arms dealers are selling to every side in the conflict. 

The Washington Post helps amplify both the doubts and the likely explanation:

It was unclear what motivation Iran, a Shiite theocracy, would have for backing Sunni insurgents, many of whom are staunchly anti-Iranian and fear the rise of Shiite power in the region.

. . . The markings on all the munitions were in English. Maj. Marty Weber, an explosives expert, said countries selling arms on the global market tend to use English lettering.

In other words, even if the weapons in question really did come from Iran, it's far more plausible that the Sunni insurgents obtained them through a third party than it is that Tehran is intentionally arming guerrillas for whom the best Iranian is a dead one.

But then, you probably know all that already.  The reason I bring up these articles is to address the more complex truth behind the other part of Gen. Caldwell's accusations -- that Iran is helping to train Iraqi Shiite militias.

Since Caldwell's credibility is somewhere near Anna Nicole Smith's pulse rate, it helps that the Associated Press yesterday provided some corroborating testimony:

Commanders of a splinter group inside the Shiite Mahdi Army militia have told The Associated Press there are as many as 4,000 members of their organization that were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs.

The Mahdi Army commanders who spoke to the AP did so on condition of anonymity because their organization is viewed as illegal by the American military and giving their names would likely lead to their arrest and imprisonment. They said Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards was running the training operation in Iran.

We can't know these anonymous sources' credibility or motivations, so it's not definitive proof -- but if you leave aside the Bushite propaganda and look at the logic of it, a below-the-radar Iranian training program for the Shiite factions in Iraq's government is not only imaginable, it's entirely unsurprising.

Back when FDL was just a gleam in Jane Hamsher's eye, you see, I was making my mostly imaginary reputation as a blogger for ahead-of-the-curve analysis of political developments in post-invasion Iraq.  Specifically, I was perhaps the first online observer to recognize many of the steps by which top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani seized control of the political process, first by refusing to accept the U.S. transition scheme in late 2003 and then forming an all-Shiite slate in 2004 to sweep the elections he had forced.

Shortly after pointing out, three months before the January 2005 elections, that they would result in exactly the kind of sectarian government that is now pretending to be running Iraq, I realized that Sistani had another, perhaps more difficult challenge ahead: Once he had installed his preferred pro-Shiite government over the wishes of the United States, how did he plan to protect it from the Sunni insurgency without becoming eternally reliant on the American military:

... on the one hand, Sistani is selling elections to his Shiite followers as the way to end the U.S. presence in Iraq, but on the other, the Americans are seemingly the only counterweight in place to stave off the Sunni-led resistance (and even they are just barely keeping their body-armored heads above water).

What will Sistani do to prevent the Shiite government he's shepherded into existence from being overrun almost immediately by its enemies? I wrote a couple of weeks ago that how the U.S reacts to the prospect of defeat in Iraq's scheduled January elections is the key question regarding what happens there over the next several months, but how Sistani responds to the prospect of victory won't be far behind.

Given the presence of a large, Shiite-dominated neighbor with an extensive military on Iraq's border -- one being threatened by a stream of bellicose U.S. rhetoric itself -- should we really be shocked that a year or two after the elections, lethal and tactically skilled Shiite militias have somehow sprung up independent of the supposedly American-trained Iraqi army?

So, to me, what Bushite functionaries allege is irrelevant.   Tell me Iran is arming Shiite-hating Sunni guerrillas, and I'll roll my eyes and say it's meaningless propaganda.  But tell me they're helping create a shadow Shiite military that may eventually turn against the U.S., and I'll say, "Well, duh.  What did you expect?!?"