They do this so well, running long-term information operations to deceive America. This drama, written by the US Department of Defense, comes to you in two acts:
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Convincing the marks
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The truth comes out, long after nobody cares
Running a successful democratic republic requires that we pay attention — better than we do today.
Act I: convincing the marks
DoD News Briefing with Major General Lynch from Baghdad, 4 May 2007 — Except:
What we’re finding is that the technology and the financing and the training of the explosively formed penetrators are coming from Iran. The EFPs are killing our soldiers, and we can trace that back to Iran.
A U.S. and Iraqi joint raid in Mahmudiyah uncovered three weapons caches containing mortar systems, rockets and ammunition on the 22nd of April. Recent date stamps and Iranian markings appeared on the ammunition. There is plenty of evidence of Iranian influence in our area, and candidly, this is just simply counterproductive. The discovery of these caches, the interdiction of their trafficking, and the capture of the men responsible for their distribution is our main focus.
“Joint Chiefs Chair Says Iran Still Sending Weapons to Iraqi Insurgents“, Fox News, 25 April 2008 — Excerpt:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused Iran on Friday of “ratcheting up” its arms and training support to insurgents in Iraq, and warned that the U.S. has the combat power to strike Tehran if needed.
Adm. Mike Mullen told a Pentagon news conference the military has evidence – such as date stamps on newly found weapons caches – that shows that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate. Some of that firepower was used to support insurgents during the recent fighting in Basra in southern Iraq. Mullen said he has seen evidence “that some of the weapons are recently not just found, but recently manufactured.”
“CIA Director Hayden Says Iran Wants Americans in Iraq Killed“, Fox News, 30 April 2008 — Excerpt:
It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq,” Hayden said. “Just make sure there’s clarity on that.”
In recent weeks, U.S. officials have ratcheted up their complaints that Iran is increasing its efforts to supply weapons and training to militants in Iraq.
Military commanders in Baghdad are expected to roll out evidence of that support soon, including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate.
Another senior military official said the evidence will include mortars, rockets, small arms, roadside bombs and armor-piercing explosives – known as explosively formed penetrators or EFPs – that troops have discovered in caches in recent months. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the evidence has not yet been made public, said dates on some of the weapons were well after Tehran signaled late last year that it was scaling back aid to insurgents.
Act II: the truth comes out, long after nobody cares
“Where Are Those Iranian Weapons in Iraq?“, Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, 21 May 2007
But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.
When Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner was asked that question at a briefing May 8, he did not answer it directly. Instead Bergner reverted to a standard U.S. military line that these groups “could not do what they’re doing without the support of foreign support [sic].” Then he defined “foreign support” to include training and funding as well as weapons, implicitly conceding that he did not have much of a case based on weapons alone.
Bergner’s refusal to address that question reflects a fundamental problem with the U.S. claims about Iranian weapons in Iraq: if there are indeed any Iranian rockets and mortars, and RPGs in the Mahdi Army’s arsenal of stand-off weapons, they represent an insignificant part of it.
{The article continues with detailed analysis of the government’s claims and the available evidence.}
“Arming our own enemies in Iraq“, Gareth Porter, Salon, 6 June 2008 — Excerpt:
Bush officials claim that Iran has supplied grenade launchers to Iraqi militants — but the real source of the weapons is U.S. negligence.
In recent months, Gen. David Petraeus charged that Iran has supplied powerful rocket-propelled grenade launchers to Shiite militias in Iraq. But according to the U.S. government’s own reports, there is no evidence to support that charge. In fact, the vast majority of RPGs in the hands of Shiite militants have come from either U.S.-purchased weapons intended for Iraq’s new security forces, or from Saddam Hussein’s old stockpiles, which the U.S. failed to secure when it took control of the country.
The Bush administration has long sought to create the impression that Iran has been playing a major military role in Iraq by supplying arms to Shiite militias, including the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s powerful Mahdi army. But to date, U.S. military officials have offered scant or even dubious evidence of Iranian military involvement in Iraq — and Petraeus’ allegation about the RPGs is a clear-cut case of unsubstantiated charges.
Last October, and again in late December, Petraeus stated emphatically there was “absolutely no question” that Iran provided RPG-29s, a sophisticated anti-tank weapon, to Iraqi Shiite militiamen. He even called the RPG-29 an Iranian “signature weapon.”
What Petraeus failed to mention, however, is that RPG-29s are manufactured by Russia, not Iran, and those that have shown up in Iraq apparently came from Syria. The Syrian government bought large numbers of RPG-29s from Russia in 1999 and 2000, many of which ended up being used by Hezbollah in the war against Israel in 2006, according to Israeli and Lebanese media reports. Even some U.S. military officials were quoted in the media in May 2006 as saying that they believed RPG-29s had been smuggled into Iraq from Syria.
Moreover, as Air Force Col. Scott Maw of the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I) Strategic Communications Office told me in a telephone interview last week, “very few” RPG-29s have actually been found in Iraq. An examination of U.S. military press releases on weapons caches found in Shiite areas reveals no mention of RPG-29s. Additionally, the U.S. military has never displayed a captured one to reporters.
{The article continues with detailed analysis of the government’s claims and the available evidence.}
“Iranian Strategy in Iraq: Politics and ‘Other Means’“, Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 13 October 2008 — Excerpt from Chapter 4: Iranian Lethal Aid in Iraq:
U.S. officials continue to claim that they have compelling evidence directly linking Iran with the provision of weapons and munitions to insurgents in Iraq.1 Iran staunchly denies these claims, and counters that they are desperate attempts by the United States to recast responsibility for failure in Iraq.
Despite Iranian protests, however, there is clear evidence of Iranian support to Iraqi militias, including many weapons manufactured after the Iran‐Iraq war, some of which were produced after the 2003 invasion.
… The complexity of international arms markets and the legacy of warfare between Iran and Iraq complicate efforts to assess the scope of Iranian lethal aid in Iraq.
Many of the Iranian weapons scattered across Iraq do appear to have been left in Iraq during the Iran‐Iraq War in the 1980s. Caches recovered by Coalition Forces in Iraq include older weathered munitions that likely have been in the ground for some time.9 Likewise, some reports erroneously attribute munitions similar to those produced in Iran as Iranian, while other Iranian munitions found in Iraq were likely purchased on the open market.
Based on the findings of this expert assessment, MNF‐I reported that Iranian munitions were recovered in 166 incidents between 1 January and 23 May 2008.18 Of these incidents, 85 were determined to include weapons and/or ordnance produced in 2003 or later and 28 incidents had sufficient evidence to determine they were manufactured before 2003. The remaining 53 recorded incidents were deemed not to have sufficient information to determine when the weapons and munitions were produced.
That sounds convincing. Here is additional data that changes the picture.
“U.S. Task Force Found Few Iranian Arms in Iraq“, Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, 15 November 2008 — Excerpt:
The data collected by the task force in the previous 6 weeks showed that relatively few of the weapons found in Shi’a militia caches were manufactured in Iran.
According to the data compiled by the task force, and made available to an academic research project last July, only 70 weapons believed to have been manufactured in Iran had been found in post-invasion weapons caches between mid-February and the second week in April. And those weapons represented only 17% of the weapons found in caches that had any Iranian weapons in them during that period.
The actual proportion of Iranian-made weapons to total weapons found, however, was significantly lower than that, because the task force was finding many more weapons caches in Shi’a areas that did not have any Iranian weapons in them.
The task force database identified 98 caches over the 5 month period with at least 1 Iranian weapon, excluding caches believed to have been hidden prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion. But according to an e-mail from the MNFI press desk this week, the task force found and analysed a total of roughly 4,600 weapons caches during that same period. The caches that included Iranian weapons thus represented just 2% of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weapons were a fraction of 1% of the total weapons found in Shi’a militia caches during that period.
The extremely small proportion of Iranian arms in Shi’a militia weapons caches further suggests that Shi’a militia fighters in Iraq had been getting weapons from local and international arms markets rather than from an official Iranian-sponsored smuggling network.
… In late April, the U.S. presented the Maliki government with a document that apparently listed various Iranian arms found in Iraq and highlighted alleged Iranian arms found in Basra. But the U.S. campaign to convince Iraqi officials collapsed when Task Force Troy analysed a series of large weapons caches uncovered in Basra and Karbala in April and May.
Caches of arms found in Karbala late last April and May totaled more than 2,500 weapons, and caches in Basra included at least 3,700 weapons, according to official MNFI statements. That brought the total number of weapons found in those former Mahdi Army strongholds to more than 6,200 weapons. But the task force found that none of those weapons were Iranian-made. The database lists 3 caches found Apr. 19, but provides no data on any of them. It lists no other caches for the region coinciding with that period, confirming that no weapons had been found to be of Iranian origin.
In announcing the weapons totals discovered in Basra to reporters on May 7, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said nothing about the provenance of the weapons, implicitly admitting that they were not Iranian-made.
Only 2 months before the new high-level propaganda push on alleged Iranian weapons supply to Shi’a militias, the U.S. command had put out a story suggesting that large numbers of Iranian-supplied arms had been buried all over the country. On Feb. 17, 2008, U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters that Iraqi and coalition forces had captured 212 weapons caches across Iraq over the previous week “with growing links to the Iranian-backed special groups”.
The Task Force Troy data for the week of Feb. 9-16 show, however, that the U.S. command had information on Iranian arms contradicting that propaganda line. According to the task force database, only 5 of those 212 caches contained any Iranian weapons that analysts believed might have been buried after the U.S. invasion. And the total number of confirmed Iranian-made weapons found in those 5 caches, according to the data, was 8 , not including 4 Iranian-made hand grenades.
The task force database includes 350 armour-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) found in Iraqi weapons caches. However, the database does not identify any of the EFPs as Iranian weapons. That treatment of EFPs in the caches appears to contradict claims by U.S. officials throughout 2007 and much of 2008 that EFPs were being smuggled into Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The allegedly Iranian-manufactured EFPs had been the centrepiece of the U.S. military’s February 2007 briefing charging Iran with arming Shi’a militiamen in Iraq.
Press reports of a series of discoveries of shops for manufacturing EFPs in Iraq in 2007 forced the U.S. command to admit that the capacity to manufacture EFPs was not limited to Iran. By the second half of 2008, U.S. officials had stopped referring to Iranian supply of EFPs altogether.
Afterword
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- Posts discussing if Will the US or Israel attack Iran?
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Posts on the FM site about psy-ops (aka propaganda, psy-ops):
- News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!, 2 September 2007
- 4GW at work in a community near you, 19 October 2007
- The media discover info ops, with outrage!, 22 April 2008
- Successful info ops, but who are the targets?, 1 May 2008
- The most expensive psy-war campaign – ever!, 13 July 2008
- A moment of truth about Iraq; apologies quickly follow – please forget this ASAP!, 3 August 2008
