Posted on 08/24/2007 11:05:48 AM PDT by nuconvert
Iranian Operatives Step Up Flow of Weapons and Training to Iraq
August 24, 2007
AFP
WASHINGTON -- Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives are trying to sabotage US security gains in Iraq by stepping up the flow of arms and training to Shiite extremist groups, a top US commander charged Friday.
Major General Rick Lynch said about 20 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members are believed to be operating in his area in central Iraq on southern and eastern outskirts of Baghdad.
"The scale of the Iranian problem is especially troubling when you look at the numbers of weapons we found and destroyed since the start of the surge," Lynch told reporters here via video link from Iraq.
He said US forces have captured 117 Iranian-made munitions since April, including rockets, armor piercing explosives and mines.
His soldiers have been targeted 48 times with armor piercing explosives made in Iran, also known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs.
Eight US soldiers from Multi-National Division Center have been killed by EFPs since the division's deployment to Iraq in April, he said.
The general said attacks with Iranian-made rockets also have grown more precise, accounting for the deaths of five US soldiers.
He described an incident in which a US surveillance drone spotted 46 Iranian-made rockets with Iranian-made timers lined up for an attack on a US forward operating base.
They were disabled, but a rocket fired at the base killed a soldier and wounded 15 others on July 11, he said.
Videos of the rockets being lined up were found about two weeks ago in a raid east of Baghdad that captured a man who Lynch said was a link between Iran and the Mahdi army, a Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Tool markings and other manufacturing evidence left no doubt that the components for the captured weapons were made in Iran, he said.
Assembled in Iraq, EFPs have gone primarily to Shiite militias but also have been found among Sunni groups, according to Lynch.
"I believe in my battlespace I've got IRGC surrogates -- people that have been trained by the IRGC in Iran and come back in Iraq to conduct acts of violence," he said
"And I believe I've got some members of the IRGC, some Iranians working in our battlespace. What they do is they transit the battlespace. They don't come in and stay. They go on back and forth," he said.
"I do believe that at any given time I've got up to about 20 Iranians working in our battlespace, who are either training Iraqis to conduct acts of violence or to conduct acts of violence themselves," he said.
Iran is cruisin for the big one. Their idiot leader knows we won’t take much more. I’d say send in the B2’s........no boots on the ground. That way we don’t have to rebuild their government.
Dubya hasn’t given them any reason to not enter iraq.
They need electricity to run centrifuges, well, cut off Iran’s electricity, that way you get more bang for your buck, it stops uranium enrichment, it shuts off the power, and it gets the younger people fired up, the people that need to stop Iran are the younger people that ask for help but will not do anything for themselves to fix the situation...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.