[rad-green] There’s No Evidence Iran Is Respons ible for the Deaths of Hundreds of Americans

*https://progressive.org/dispatches/-no-evidence-iran-is-responsible-for-the-deaths-of-hundreds-of-americans-zunes-200107/
<https://progressive.org/dispatches/-no-evidence-iran-is-responsible-for-the-deaths-of-hundreds-of-americans-zunes-200107/>*

*The Progressive          January 7, 2020*
There’s No Evidence Iran Is Responsible for the Deaths of Hundreds of
Americans

*The assertions being repeated today seem based on apparently groundless
claims from twelve years ago by the same people who said Iraq possessed
weapons, weapons programs, and weapons systems that were such a grave
threat that they ignited the U.S.-Iraq war.*


*by Stephen Zunes <https://progressive.org/topics/stephen-zunes/> *


The skepticism expressed by some leading Democrats and the mainstream media
regarding the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani has
been refreshing, after decades of bipartisan support for disastrous U.S.
policies in the region.

These critiques, not unreasonably, have acknowledged Suleiman’s nefarious
role in advancing Iran’s geostrategic reach in the Middle East supporting
extremist militia, exacerbating sectarianism, and suppressing progressive
democratic movements.

However, the claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow
responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq—which has
been repeated by leading Democrats and the mainstream media—appears to be
groundless.

There have not been significant U.S. casualties in Iraq since around 2007,
when charges of Iranian involvement in attacks against U.S. forces first
surfaced. Virtually all attacks against U.S. forces since the 2003 invasion
had come from Baathist, Sunni, and other anti-Iranian groups. Of the more
than 10,000 suspected insurgents arrested in U.S. counter-insurgency sweeps
prior to the first U.S. withdrawal in 2011, the relatively few foreigners
among them were Arabs, not Iranians.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, compiled by America’s sixteen
intelligence agencies and issued in February 2007, downplayed Iran’s role
in Iraq’s violence and instability. Yet it was at this point that the
George W. Bush Administration began making the case that Iran had become
the principal foreign threat to U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Bush Administration’s case was based primarily on assertions that bomb
fragments, such as those displayed by U.S. military officials in a press
conference in Baghdad on February 11 of that year, were of Iranian origin.
But they never showed any proof making this linkage.

U.S. officials originally claimed to have documents, computer files,
confessions by captured Iranians, and evidence that Iranian officials were
caught with explosives. None of this was ever made public, however, raising
doubts as to whether such evidence even existed in the first place.

They then insisted that Iran was responsible for the increased
sophistication over the past several months of what are known as
“improvised explosive devices” (IEDs), which were being used by Iraqi
insurgents against U.S. and Iraqi military convoys. But the increased
sophistication is not necessarily a result of outside aid. In virtually
every conflict, particularly those involving irregular warfare, each side
constantly seeks to improve the accuracy and lethality of its weapons in
the course of the struggle.

Of particular concern to U.S. officials were the alleged increase in
attacks by IEDs using “explosively formed projectiles” (EFPs), which U.S.
officials claimed had killed 170 U.S. and allied soldiers.

While the Bush Administration insisted the machine-tooling was so
sophisticated it could only have been manufactured in Iran, British
government scientists found that the devices could have simply been “turned
on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions” and were
not that different than munitions manufactured elsewhere.

________________________________

The pre-invasion Iraqi army and the munitions industry that supported it
certainly possessed enough resident technical expertise to produce the
material that the insurgents are using. Indeed, it is rather bizarre that
the same U.S. administration that insisted just four years earlier that
Iraq was technologically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and
was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb would then be incapable of
developing an effective roadside bomb without direct support from its
neighbor Iran.

Furthermore, so many metal tubes and explosives were stolen from Iraqi army
stockpiles during the chaos following the 2003 U.S. invasion, the
insurgents presumably possessed enough material to manufacture their own
IEDs for decades. And even if the pieces of weaponry displayed by U.S.
military officials came from Iran, there is a huge black market in various
explosive devices in Iraq. So it would not be surprising to find components
from any number of countries, including those of recent manufacture.

Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace,
admitted that there was no proof that the Iranian government was supplying
Iraqi insurgents with the lethal weaponry. The British government withdrew
similar charges they made in 2005, and the Iraqi government has also denied
U.S. accusations of an Iranian connection.

In short, the assertions being repeated today seem based on apparently
groundless claims from twelve years ago by the same people who said Iraq
possessed weapons, weapons programs, and weapons systems that were such a
grave threat that they ignited the U.S.-Iraq war. It was this invasion, of
course, that led to the rise of pro-Iranian sectarian parties and militia
and the resulting Iranian influence in that Arab country.

Segments of the Iranian government and religious hierarchy certainly have
been providing training, arms, as well as financial and logistical support
to Iraqi Shia political groups and their militias. Soleimani was a key
figure in that effort. They were highly effective, if sometimes ruthless,
fighters in the war against ISIS, often in conjunction with U.S. forces.

In addition, some of these militias directed death squads against the Sunni
Arab community in Iraq during the height of the country’s sectarian
violence between 2006 and 2008. More recently, the militias have been
targeting pro-democracy anti-corruption protesters. The proxies are brutal
and it’s not surprising that so many Iraqis want the Iranians out.

However, these Shia parties are part of Iraq’s elected coalition government
and the militia are state-sanctioned, making them technically part of the
Iraqi armed forces. And it’s more than ironic for the United States to
insist that Iran has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of their
next-door neighbor that the United States invaded, occupied, engaged in a
bloody counter-insurgency war, and, where nearly seventeen years later, it
continues to station thousands of troops.

Rather than recognizing that Iran is simply seeking to take advantage from
the dramatic U.S.-instigated changes in the political and strategic
situation on their western flank (as would any regional power in a
comparable situation), Bush—and now Trump, with the backing of many
Democrats—has tried to depict Iran’s role as something far more sinister:
yet another front of “the war on terrorism,” making an aggressive U.S.
response a matter of “self-defense.”

Although Iranian policy has certainly contributed to the suffering of the
Iraqi people, it pales in comparison to the damage inflicted upon that
country by the United States. And, if those in Washington, D.C., really
want to protect American soldiers from pro-Iranian militia, they simply
need to do what the Iraqis and a lot of others have been demanding: Get
them out of Iraq. Now.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the
University of San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Progressive, he
serves as an Editorial Fellow at the Tikkun Institute.

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