Where are those Iranian arms in Iraq?

Asia Times
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The United States military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shi'ites opposing the US occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

But US officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed US military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shi'ite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.

When Major General Kevin Bergner was asked that question at a briefing on May 8, he did not answer it directly. Instead, Bergner reverted to a standard US 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 US claims about Iranian weapons in Iraq: if there are indeed any Iranian rockets and mortars and RPGs in the arsenal of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army's stand-off weapons, they represent an insignificant part of it.

(Continued here.)