Global economic disasters on horizon, US troop redeployment from Afghanistan, changing of guard at CIA, DoD, Saudi Arabia and surrogates trodding Human Rights – war drum against Iran sounding louder

US-IRAN – Tensions Mount Over Iraq, Nuke Sanctions
By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON, Jul 12, 2011 (IPS) – Reviving U.S.-Iran friction over Iraq may have more to do with deteriorating relations over Iran’s nuclear programme than with uncertainty over U.S. troop levels in Iraq beyond the end of this year.

In recent weeks, a chorus of U.S. officials has accused Iran of providing lethal weapons to Iraqi Shiite militias that have targeted U.S. soldiers and caused a spike in U.S. death tolls. Similar charges have been made against Iran in the past.

Last month, Robert Gates, then U.S. defence secretary, said Iran- backed Shiite militias were responsible for the deaths of five U.S. soldiers on Jun. 6, the single largest toll for the U.S. in two years. Overall, 15 U.S. servicemen were killed in Iraq in June, also a two- year record.

Gates’s successor, Leon Panetta, repeated the charges this week during his first trip to Iraq as defence secretary.

“We’re seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they’ve really hurt us,” Panetta told reporters in Baghdad on Monday. He threatened Iran with unspecified retaliation if the attacks did not cease.

Panetta did not reveal any concrete evidence for the charges. U.S. officials and military experts say he was referring to rocket-assisted mortars.

“The main mass casualty producer for U.S. troops has been the IRAMS (improvised rocket-assisted munitions) which have been around for several years, and which I believe are used exclusively by Iranian- supported groups,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank closely tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“There are indications that they may have gotten more lethal lately, though I don’t know if this is a function of modifications to the weapons or to improved training,” he said.

U.S. accusations are hard if not impossible to prove given the fact that Iraq is awash with weapons and smuggling across the border with Iran is rampant. Iran denies the allegations. ..more