(Washington Times) Editorial - The U.S. is engaged in a deadly proxy war with Iran. Two senior Obama administration defense officials have addressed the open secret of Iran's active support for insurgent groups fighting U.S. troops overseas. During a visit to Iraq, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta strongly denounced Iranian support for increasingly violent Shiite militia groups in that country. "We are very concerned about Iran and the weapons they are providing to extremists here in Iraq," he said. "We're seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they've really hurt us." "We cannot sit back and simply allow this to continue to happen....This is not something we're going to walk away from. It's something we're going to take on head-on." Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Pentagon Press Association, "Iran is very directly supporting extremist Shiite groups, which are killing our troops. There is no question they are shipping high-tech weapons in there...that are killing our people. And the forensics prove that." Iran has been directly or indirectly responsible for more U.S. combat deaths than any other country since the end of the Vietnam War. There is nothing improvised about the explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) that Iran has been supplying to militant groups. These sophisticated weapons are powerful enough to defeat the heaviest U.S. armored vehicles. A 2006 classified intelligence report leaked in the New York Times asserted, "All source reporting since 2004 indicates that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Corps-Quds Force is providing professionally-built EFPs and components to Iraqi Shia militants." The latest State Department report on Iranian support for international terrorism states, "Iran's Quds Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives and indirect fire weapons. Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged arms shipments to select Taliban members, including small arms and associated ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107 mm rockets and plastic explosives."
2011-07-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive