Military steps up criticism of Iran

U.S. military leaders have issued a series of unusual public accusations and warnings about Iran, saying they have new evidence of Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. troops as part of a broader effort to destabilize Iraq.

On Friday, the top uniformed officer in the U.S., Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, accused Iran in a televised news briefing of increasing its shipments of weapons to militants in Iraq, in violation of its promises to stem the flow of arms.

The comments by Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came days after angry complaints by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

In addition, military officers in Iraq are planning to publicize evidence of what Mullen called Iran’s “malign influence” there.

Military officials said there was no concerted U.S. campaign to intensify pressure on Iran. But taken together, the remarks represent a shift in the military’s thinking. Hopes expressed last year that Iran might be tempering its involvement in Iraq seem to have evaporated, and military officials have renewed warnings about the potential for military action.

Though a third conflict in the Middle East in addition to those in Iraq and Afghanistan would be “extremely stressful” for the U.S. military, no potential adversary should feel emboldened, Mullen said.

“I have reserve capability, particularly in our Navy and our Air Force,” Mullen said. “So it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability.”

Underscoring the latest tensions, a cargo vessel under contract to the Defense Department fired on a group of small boats in the Persian Gulf on Friday, briefly touching off alarm in the world energy markets. U.S. military officials said they believed the boats involved in the confrontation were Iranian, but military officials in Tehran denied the incident took place.

President Bush and officials in his administration have been accused by political opponents of using criticism of Iran to shift public attention away from the protracted war in Iraq.

U.S. intelligence experts reversed earlier assessments in December and concluded that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. But in releasing classified information this week on an alleged nuclear reactor being built in Syria with the help of North Korea, the White House also warned Iran against pursuing such technology.

Some experts say the tough new talk on Iran is aimed more at Arab nations, which are worried about Iranian influence in the Middle East and want to see Washington take a harder line against Tehran.

Military officers in Washington and Baghdad dismissed the idea that the audience for their recent criticisms was anyone other than the leaders of the government in Tehran, and said their comments were prompted by military concerns.

Both Gates and Mullen have urged repeatedly that military confrontation with Iran be avoided. Mullen and other military officers have said that problems with Iran can and should be solved diplomatically.

Gates has sought bipartisan ground on Iraq in his dealings with Congress, and Mullen has a reputation for being fiercely apolitical.

The tougher rhetoric may reflect the shifting nature of threats inside Iraq. The U.S. military has weakened the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and reached cease-fire agreements with many former Sunni Arab insurgents.

As those threats have receded, Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militant groups have been left as the most serious threat to stability.

“It’s a reordering of challenges,” said Nathan Freier, a former advisor to the military in Iraq and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The reasoned military judgment is that armed Shiite groups that operate outside government control are posing a substantial challenge to making additional progress in Iraq,” he said.

Iran has carefully built up influence with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, but it also has ties to the movement led by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.

To those in the Pentagon, recent fighting in the southern city of Basra between Maliki’s government forces and armed groups associated with Sadr is a clear illustration of Iran’s ability to both stir up violence and clamp down on it. Some military officials believe Iran pressured Sadr to agree to a cease-fire with Maliki.

On Friday, Mullen said the Basra fighting was a visible confirmation of the expanded influence of Iran in Iraq.

“I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability,” he said.

Officers in Baghdad have complained about growing numbers of explosively formed penetrators, a particularly dangerous form of roadside bomb. U.S. military officers have long blamed Iran for the presence of those weapons in Iraq. In addition, officers have said Iranian-trained militants are responsible for the worst rocket and mortar attacks on Baghdad’s Green Zone.

At one military briefing this month, officials displayed rockets they said had been supplied by Iran. And at an April 20 briefing, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a division commander in central Iraq, said many of the 146 soldiers he had lost were killed by Iranian munitions. He said his division had detained at least 25 Iraqis who said they had been trained, directly or indirectly, by Iranians.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and other American diplomats in Baghdad have been equally critical of Iran. In testimony in Washington this month, Crocker said Iran was seeking to co-opt elements of the Shiite community.

“Iran continues to undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government to establish a stable, secure state through the training of criminal militia elements,” he said.

Iranian officials publicly dismiss the U.S. charges. Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, including Tehran’s envoy to Baghdad, have condemned the shelling of the U.S.-protected Green Zone and praised Maliki’s offensive against militants in southern Iraq. They blame the U.S. military presence for Iraq’s troubles.

But experts and officials in Iran and the U.S. say several dynamics are at work within Tehran’s leadership circle. Iranians support their Shiite, Kurdish and even Sunni allies in the Baghdad government. But they fear the U.S. will turn its sights on Iran if the situation in Iraq stabilizes, at least during the last months of the Bush administration.

In his news conference Friday, Mullen voiced support for the view that Iran wants to destabilize the Iraqi government.

“In the long run, they prefer to see a weak Iraq neighbor,” Mullen said.

“They have expressed long-term goals to be the regional power in that part of the world.”

Some experts say that may be what’s behind the new U.S. approach. Trita Parsi, a Mideast affairs scholar and president of the National Iranian American Council, said many Arab countries wanted to see the U.S. take a tougher stance against Iran.

The U.S. has been pushing Saudi Arabia and other gulf nations to open embassies in Baghdad. But Parsi said the Arab states were reluctant to support the Maliki government unless the U.S. did more to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq.

“In order for the Arabs to go along with the Iraqi Shiite-led government, one of their demands is that the U.S. push back on Iran and make sure Iraq does not fall into Iranian hands,” Parsi said.

Although the military is primarily concerned about Iranian support for Iraqi militants, many Mideast experts also worry about the possibility of a maritime confrontation that could touch off a broader military conflict.

Friday’s gulf incident, which temporarily drove the price of oil to $119.55 a barrel, occurred when speedboats came within 100 yards of the Westward Venture, a commercial cargo ship contracted by the Pentagon. A detachment of U.S. naval personnel aboard the ship fired three bursts of warning shots, a Defense Department official said.

The official said the shots, from a .50-caliber gun and an M-16 rifle, came after the Westward Venture attempted to warn the boats away by sounding its whistle and firing a flare. The speedboats turned away after the shots were fired.

Although U.S. officials weren’t certain the boats were Iranian, the incident occurred 50 miles off the Iranian coast, the official said, and the boats were believed to be part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s increasingly aggressive naval force in the region.

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julian.barnes@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Tina Susman in Baghdad, Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Peter Spiegel in Washington contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

More than one view

Since early 2007, American military leaders and Bush administration officials have expressed various opinions about the possible role of Iran in Iraq. Here are some:

Feb. 14, 2007: Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, chief military spokesman in Iraq, said: “We have physical evidence of munitions being supplied to extremists. . . . We have in custody Quds Force officers who are, at a minimum, here illegally in Iraq. . . . There’s no question that Quds Force elements are involved in this.”

Feb. 26, 2007: U.S. Army officers in Iraq displayed plastic explosives they said were made in Iran and found in Diyala province. It was the third briefing in two weeks in which U.S. military officials presented evidence they said showed Iran’s hand in Iraqi violence.

Sept. 29, 2007: Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said there were signs of a slight drop in the type of attacks associated with Shiite militants since Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki secured a pledge from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to help cut off weapons and funding. “Honestly, and I really mean this, all of us would really welcome the opportunity to see this, confirm it and even -- in whatever way we could -- to reciprocate,” he said in Baghdad. “But it really is wait-and-see time right now still.”

Nov. 15, 2007: “We have not seen any recent evidence that weapons continue to come across the border into Iraq,” said Army Maj. Gen. James Simmons in Baghdad. “We believe that the initiatives and the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up.”

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Source: Times reports