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December 11th,
2008 - Iranian Support for Iraq Insurgency Appears to Wane: US General |
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Iranian Support for Iraq Insurgency
Appears to Wane: US General From Agence France Presse December 11, 2008 Washington - Numbers of
Iranian-made "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) in Iraq
decreased in recent months, reflecting an apparent decline in Tehran's
support for Iraqi insurgents, a US general said Thursday. "The EFPs are way down
- I am talking about terms of a dozen, 20 in Iraq in a month from maybe 60,
80," US Army Lieutenant General Thomas Metz told journalists. EFPs are a deadly type of
shaped charge that is particularly effective at penetrating armor. Metz, director of the Joint
Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), a program which
aims to prevent roadside attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the EFPs have
been deployed against US forces with lethal effectiveness. "They have represented
over time probably five percent of IEDs, and would represent as much as 35
percent of the casualties." The general added however
that "in the past three months they have been way down." "We must assume that
someone has made a decision on the Shia side connected to Iran to bring them
down," he said. Washington has long accused
Tehran of stoking anti-US violence in Iraq, particularly by supplying arms
and roadside bombs to Shiite insurgents - an allegation that Iran has
vehemently denied. Asked if the reduction meant
that the Iranian government or the elite Quds Force - a special unit of
Iran's Revolutionary Guard - had made a conscious decision to pull back its
support of the Iraqi insurgency, Metz answered: "I am not in the intel
business but that's the conclusion I would draw." He added: "The EFP
explosions are down, finding them are down, the casualties from them are
down." The general said the
reduction might also be due in part to the Pentagon's targeting of the groups
that use such weapons. "We've been focusing on
the networks that we think are using EFPs," Metz said. While officials have been
heartened by the decline of EFP casualties, Metz said the US military has
noted a worrisome rise in the use of IEDs (improvised explosive devices)
against coalition forces in Afghanistan. "There is a rise in
IEDs," Metz said, adding however that EFPs are still relative rare in
Afghanistan. "The Taliban, Al-Qaeda
and other insurgents found direct fire and indirect fire not to be as
effective against coalition forces," said the general, who added that
the number of casualties in Afghanistan from IEDs now exceed those from
direct and indirect fire. Meanwhile, an Iraqi
government spokesman told a media roundtable at the Pentagon that Baghdad
also had noted the apparent change in Tehran's posture toward the insurgency. "Iran has shown a
positive stance since last year," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said,
crediting diplomacy between Iraq and Iran. "I think that the
government of Iraq played a major role in this," he said, citing in
particular reassurances made by Iraq to Iran regarding the recently concluded
Status of Forces Agreement reached by Washington and Baghdad last month. Both Iraq and the United
States have endorsed the controversial military pact that includes a
timetable for the complete withdrawal of American troops from the country by
the end of 2011. The two sides had been
racing to secure a bilateral agreement to replace the UN mandate currently
governing the more than 150,000 US-led troops stationed in the country, which
expires on December 31. "The assurances that
were being given by Mr Maliki (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki) that the
SOFA is not going to be against them ... helped reducing the temperature with
Iran," al-Dabbagh said. "At the end, we do need
to have a deep dialogue with Iran," said al-Dabbagh. "Iran should understand
that in order to be a good partner they should respect the international law
and refrain from interfering not only in Iraq, (but also) in the
region." Copyright © 2008 AFP. All
rights reserved. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j_G-TNBzmQJ-O4G0MWpXATK49CdQ |