Tehran's policy is to strengthen not destroy

IRAQ:The Iraqi government has distanced itself from Washington's accusations that Iran is supplying weapons and bombs to militias attacking US troops in Iraq.

The Arabic daily, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, reported yesterday that Maryam al-Rayyis, national affairs adviser to Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, reiterated the government's stand that Baghdad has great respect for Iran and Iraq's other neighbours.

Her comment makes it clear that the Maliki government is not prepared to adopt a hostile or confrontational stance towards Tehran. Indeed, the past two Iraqi governments have not only called for dialogue between Washington and Tehran, but tried and failed to foster direct talks between them.

Two of the three main Shia fundamentalist factions, Mr Maliki's Dawa party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), are closely tied to Tehran.

As anonymous US officials made their allegations about Iranian involvement with Iraqi insurgents, Mr Maliki's predecessor and Dawa party chief, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was in Tehran for celebrations of the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Following a meeting with Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Dr Jaafari expressed regret over the arrest of Iranian diplomats and military officers by US forces. Two envoys were detained last December, one of them in the SCIRI compound in Baghdad, and five in the Kurdish city of Irbil in January.

SCIRI was founded by Tehran and its Badr Corps militia was recruited, trained and armed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, has also had longstanding ties with Tehran. Dr Jaafari said the Iraqi government is trying to secure the release of the Iranians.

Nassar al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the third and largest Shia faction, the movement headed by independent cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, declared that the Sadrists have never received backing from Tehran. The Sadrists are, in fact, rivals of Iran's partners, Dawa and SCIRI, and adopt an anti-Iranian stance.

Although the Sadrist militia, the Mahdi Army, did fight US troops at Najaf and the Sadr City neighbourhood in Baghdad in 2004, the movement's fighters have not challenged the US military since then.

However, renegade gangs of Mahdi Army fighters could have used Iranian weapons and explosives against US troops. Some fighters left the Mahdi Army because they disagreed with Mr Sadr's decisions to halt operations against US and other foreign forces and join the US-backed government.

But attacks by such groups would be few and far between. Prof Juan Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan, said: "Almost all roadside bombs in Iraq are set by Sunni Arab guerrillas who deeply dislike Shiites and hate Iran."

It is unlikely, therefore, that Tehran would be arming such groups, particularly since two of the governing Shia factions and the Kurds are allied to Iran, he said. It is in Iran's interest to strengthen rather than weaken the Iraqi regime.

Other analysts point out that the majority of fatalities amongst US troops have occurred in Sunni majority provinces and quarters of the capital. One suggests that Iran supplies material to the Badr Corps which is placed in arsenals for future use. Some of this may reach the flourishing arms market where Sunni insurgents shop for weapons and explosives.

The main US claim is that weapons called "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), are manufactured in Iran and supplied to Shia militants by the Quds formation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the instructions of the seniormost cleric in the Iranian ruling hierarchy, Ayatollah Khameini.

However, no solid proof of this charge was offered. These weapons, deployed on roadsides and detonated by mobile phones as convoys pass, are simple explosives-filled canisters designed to project blazing pieces of metal at armoured vehicles. While these weapons may have originated in Iran, technically adept Iraqis would soon learn to make their own EFPs.

Before the 2003 war Iraq had a large cadre of western-trained explosives experts and a massive bomb-making facility at QaQaa, south of Baghdad. The first EFPs appeared in 2004 and gradually became more commonly used.

This indicates they could be locally manufactured and perfected. Similar devices were developed by the Lebanese Hizbullah movement.