Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: IPS: Where Are Those Iranian Weapons in Iraq?

Mi sembra opportuno tenere gli occhi aperti e valutare attentamente 
certi annunci di parte statunitense sul coinvolgimento dell'Iran nel 
teatro irakeno.
L'opinione pubblica dovrebbe evitare di cadere per la seconda volta nel 
sacco di Bush e delle psyop dei suoi generali: sarebbe una volta di troppo.
-------------------------------------------------
POLITICS:  Where Are Those Iranian Weapons in Iraq?
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, May 21 (IPS) - The U.S. military command in Iraq continues 
to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shiites 
opposing the U.S. occupation, implying that they have become dependent 
on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
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.
Reports by the U.S. command in Iraq over the past 15 months cited only a 
handful of Iranian weapons out of hundreds counted in caches found in 
Shiite areas. Nearly 700 mortars and rockets were reported by specific 
caliber size, along with a handful of RPGs, in nearly two dozen caches. 
Of that total, only four rockets were reported as being of Iranian 
origin, and another 15 were listed as possibly being Iranian.
Although those reports do not represent all the Mahdi Army caches found, 
they provide further evidence of the relative importance of Iranian 
rockets, mortars and RPGs in the Mahdi Army arsenal. That is because 
U.S. military officials are so eager to publicise any discovery of an 
Iranian-made weapon system that they would exploit any opportunity 
available to do so.
The U.S. command has gone so far as to claim that it had found "four 
Iranian hand grenades" -- but they were in a cache of weapons found in 
an al Qaeda area.
Based on weapons caches discovered over the past 15 months, the Mahdi 
Army has relied overwhelmingly on four types of heavy weapons: 60mm and 
120mm mortars, 107mm rocket, and 57mm anti-tank missile.
Those are essentially the same mortars and rockets that have turned up 
in al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent weapons caches, suggesting that both 
groups have obtained their heavier weapons from the international arms 
market. In fact, 60mm and 120mm mortars were used by Sunni guerrillas in 
the very early months of the war against U.S. occupation troops.
A U.S. explosives expert, Maj. Marty Weber, confirmed in April 2007 that 
most 107mm rockets found in Iraq were Chinese-made. He claimed that Iran 
had repainted Chinese 60mm and 107mm rockets them and sold them on the 
"open market".
However, Chinese, Yugoslav and Pakistani 107mm rockets have also been 
the weapon of choice of Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan, according to 
U.S. military officers there.
The U.S. military has refrained from making any charges against Iran 
over the 107mm rockets found in Iraq, perhaps because it would support 
the conclusion that the Mahdi Army was buying weapons on the 
international market rather than obtaining them from the Iranian 
Revolutionary Guard Corps.
U.S. officials tried to capitalise on the increased mortar and rocket 
attacks on the Green Zone and U.S. military headquarters last year to 
argue that they were the result of a rising tide of Iranian supply of 
such stand-off weapons -- particularly 240mm rockets -- to what the U.S. 
command calls "special groups" of Shiite militiamen.
One U.S. official, who insisted on being identified only as a "senior 
official", told this writer in mid-September 2007 that rockets and 
mortars provided by Iran since the beginning of that year -- and 
especially 240 mm rockets -- were doing much greater damage because of 
their greater accuracy and power compared with the older Katyusha 
rockets -- mostly from Iraqi stocks -- that had been employed in 
attacking U.S. bases and the Green Zone in previous years.
But evidence from the U.S. command itself contradicts that dramatic 
narrative of a bold, new Iranian intervention in the war. A 
Multi-National Force - Iraq press release dated Jun. 1, 2007 reported 
that a cache of weapons had been found in an area from which Mahdi Army 
troops had fired rockets at the Green Zone. It did not claim any Iranian 
rockets or mortars in the cache but only 20 107mm rocket warheads, three 
fully assembled 107mm rockets and one 60mm mortar.
No 240mm rocket has been reported found in a Mahdi Army weapons cache 
over the past year, but a single warhead for a 240mm rocket was reported 
to have been found in Basra Apr. 19. No official claim has been made 
that it was manufactured in Iran, however.
After a rocket fired at Camp Victory on Sep. 11, 2007 killed one and 
wounded 11 others, U.S. officials told the news media that the command 
spokesman, Gen. Bergner, would display fragments of a 240mm rocket -- 
complete with Iranian markings -- at his next press briefing in order to 
"show the link between the Iranian weapons and the damage they are doing".
But Bergner admitted to the media that there were no discernible Iranian 
markings on the fragment, and that a number of countries manufacture 
240mm rockets. He was able to assert only that ordnance experts "assess 
it is of [sic] consistent with the rockets of Iranian origin we have 
seen used in other attacks."
That was a very weak claim, because Bergner had not provided any 
evidence to the media that previous attacks had involved Iranian 240mm 
rockets either.
When the military headquarters at Camp Victory was hit by rocket fire 
last Oct. 12, officials admitted that it was 107mm rockets, not 240mm 
rockets that had been used.
Gen. David Petraeus insisted last October that there is "absolutely no 
question" that Iran is providing RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade 
launchers to Iraqi Shiite groups. But RPG-29s are manufactured by 
Russia, not Iran. Syria was known to have purchased large quantities of 
the RPG-29 in 1999-2000. Both the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the 
Beirut-based defence monthly Defense 21 have confirmed that the RPG-29s 
used by Hezbollah in 2006 were Russian-made weapons obtained via Syria.
In weapons caches reported from Shiite locations, not a single RPG-29 
has been identified. Of the 160 RPG launchers reported in Mahdi Army 
caches, along with 800 RPG missiles, none were identified as Iranian, 
although some were identified as being Soviet-made. Only 11 were 
reported to be RPG-7s -- a type of launcher that is made by Russia and 
China as well as Iran and used by 40 countries around the world.
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The 
paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of 
Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
(END/2008)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42448
-- 
[namib] Posso legalmente inneggiare al comunismo, ma non al fascismo.
L'una appartenenza è appunto *criminale*, l'altra no.
[tonibaruch] Purtroppo abbiamo questa legge idiota, è vero.
http://groups.google.it/group/it.politica.internazionale/tree/browse_frm/thread/3f0249225d16ae1d/9d60fe69c1a4658e

 Mi sembra opportuno tenere gli occhi aperti 
E' da un pezzo che te lo dicono.
Buon proposito comunque.
Serve una bibliografia?
Tb
-- 
Il dubbio è il padre della pigrizia [shadal]

 [tonibaruch] Purtroppo abbiamo questa legge idiota, è vero.
http://groups.google.it/group/it.politica.internazionale/tree/browse_.
..