It's probably not escaped your attention that the administration has Iran in its sights. The president, while denying in his Richard Engel interview that the Iraq adventure had strengthened Iran"s position in the Middle East, keeps hammering on the idea that the Iranians are "meddling" in the affairs of their neighbor -- unlike the U.S., which is just helping out thousands of miles from home.
Aside from the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions, the primary focus of the administration has been on the idea that Iran was training militia members and supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq. So it was doubly curious that this item appeared on an L.A. Times blog early this month: curious because of its content, that a briefing called to publicize the weapons found in Basra made no mention of Iran, and because of its appearance, only on the online edition of the paper, not in print. Yet it did seem kind of newsworthy:
...neither the United States nor Iraq has displayed any of the alleged arms to the public or press, and lately it is looking less likely they will. U.S. military officials said it was up to the Iraqis to show the items; Iraqi officials lately have backed off the accusations against Iran.
A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them were from Iran.
Now, at the end of the month, the online site Asia Times has fleshed out the story, with a detailed report on the weapons turning up in Iraq. A sample:
Reports by the US command in Iraq over the past 15 months cited only a handful of Iranian weapons out of hundreds counted in caches found in Shi'ite 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.
Could it possibly be that the administration's conclusions were reached in advance of, or even iin the absence of, supporting facts? And could it be that the major media don't think of this as a significant story?