Behind the Iran Intel: A U.S. briefer "overstates" Iran's meddling in Iraq

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Feb. 22, 2007

"strayed from his script and overstated evidence linking Iranian leaders to weapons found in Iraq"

TRANSLATION

"STAYED ON his script and overstated evidence linking Iranian leaders to weapons found in Iraq"Feb. 21, 2007 - An anonymous U.S. official, assigned to provide a recent “background” briefing to the news media in Baghdad, strayed from his script and overstated evidence linking Iranian leaders to weapons found in Iraq, according to four U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

The White House is still trying to recover from the stumble, which happened during a much- anticipated Feb. 11 briefing. U.S. officials had hoped to use the event to ratchet up pressure on the Tehran regime. But instead of focusing public and congressional attention on the role of Iranian government agents in stoking violence in Iraq, the briefing wound up raising new questions about whether the Bush administration is hyping intelligence about Iran in much the same way it did about Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq four years ago.

The briefing has also inadvertently called attention to what may be an even more serious problem: the limits of U.S. intelligence in deciphering Iranian government actions. Unable to recruit enough reliable spies or collect sufficient hard technical intelligence about the country’s military and nuclear programs, U.S. intelligence agencies are being forced once again to fall back on “deductions” and “inferences.” In many ways, this is the same “guesswork” process that a White House review panel later concluded was governed by “groupthink” conclusions—which ultimately led to wrong calls about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The briefing, which took place at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was billed in advance as the forum in which the Bush administration would finally lay out its most disturbing findings about Iran's role in Iraq. It was originally scheduled to take place before Feb. 11, but was delayed—which increased anticipation about what would be revealed. Three briefers—one described as a “senior defense official,” another as a U.S. military “analyst” and the third as a U.S. military “explosives expert“—were assigned to conduct the session. But their full names and titles were not provided to the attending journalists (an unusual step even for “background” briefings), in order to protect their anonymity. In addition, cameras and tape recorders were banned from the session and no transcript was made, leading administration critics to charge that the White House was afraid to expose its evidence to full public scrutiny.

According to several Washington intelligence officials involved in monitoring fallout from the presentation, the Baghdad briefers were supposed to stick closely to a script and slide show about Iranian weapons shipments into Iraq that had been carefully vetted by the National Security Council in Washington. The slide show's contents also had been approved by U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.

The slide show, which was later e-mailed to NEWSWEEK by a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, includes a flat assertion that "Iran is a significant contributor to attacks on Coalition forces and also supports violence against the Iraqi security Force and innocent Iraqis." It continues with explicit claims that the Quds Force provided weapons and money to Iraqi militants engaged in anti-U.S. attacks.

To back up these claims, the presentation included what the slide-show text says are pictures of Iranian-manufactured weapons seized in Iraq, including deadly "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) allegedly used against U.S. troops and other manufactured munitions, some containing English-language markings. The slide presentation says Iranian and Iraqi detainees gave U.S. interrogators detailed information about how Quds Force personnel were involved in smuggling the weapons from Iran into Iraq, including the names of people who had supplied insurgents with armor-piercing improvised bombs.

At some point during the Baghdad presentation, however, one of the briefers apparently went beyond the text of the slide show. The briefer claimed that senior Iranian government officials had authorized the Quds Force to supply insurgents with weapons designed to kill Americans. If true, it would be powerful evidence that high-level elements of the Iranian regime were directly involved in the targeting of U.S. soldiers—arguably an act of war.

In the absence of an official transcript, the briefer’s precise words are unclear. Most news accounts quoted the briefer as saying that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government had authorized the weapons shipments. The BBC Web site quoted the anonymous U.S. official saying: "We assess that these activities are coming from the senior levels of the Iranian government."

According to the four U.S. intelligence officials (who, like all government sources in this story, would not be named talking about intelligence matters), the BBC account is an accurate reflection of the view of most U.S. intelligence analysts. Based on the way analysts understand the historical and day-to-day relationship between the Iranian government and the Quds Force, U.S. agencies believe that someone at the top of the Iranian government had to know about and probably authorized the Quds Force to ship weapons to Shia militias in Iraq for use against U.S. troops.

The U.S. officials said this deduction is based on the U.S. understanding that the Quds Force is tightly controlled by top Iraqi leaders—as is its parent organization, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, one of Iran's principal internal security forces.

But the U.S. officials acknowledge that what the briefer said in Baghdad is only a deduction—in other words a guess, perhaps even an educated guess. The "assessment," the four sources said, is not backed up by hard intelligence linking any specific weapons shipments or Quds Force activity in Iraq to any specific order by any individual Iranian leader. Various reports—and some statements by U.S. officials—have suggested that the Quds Force reports to either Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader. But the intelligence officials said the U.S. government has no intelligence reporting proving that either of these leaders knew about or issued any order regarding the shipment of weapons into Iraq.

"The Quds Force is like a special unit that reports to the leadership. They take direction from the leadership," said one Defense official in Washington who is familiar with intelligence reporting and analysis on the subject. But, the official added: "Who gives the order, we don't know."

Another official who has monitored relevant intelligence reporting said allegations that top Iranian leaders approved alleged Quds Force activity in Iraq is at best circumstantial. "There is no evidence Quds has authorization to kill Americans ... or that the ayatollah knows what an EFP is," the official said. Another complicating factor: the primary motivator of the Shia militias has been to protect the Shia population from attacks by Sunni insurgents. The official added that he believes the Baghdad briefer who made the inflated claims now "regrets the certainty" with which the original assertion was voiced.

Whatever the briefer’s intentions, his statements sparked a new political controversy over the Bush administration's handling of intelligence. Senior U.S. military officers and administration officials contradicted the briefer's reported comments. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace told journalists traveling with him in Asia that even though bombmaking materials found in Iraq appear to have come from Iran, "That does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this." Adm. William Fallon, the new top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, told CNN: "I have no idea who may be actually hands-on in this stuff, but I do know that this is not helpful to the situation in Iraq."

Even so, White House spokesman Tony Snow continued to use a version of the harder-line analytical view. "The Quds Force is, in fact, an official arm of the Iranian government and, as such, the government bears responsibility and accountability for its actions, as you would expect of any sovereign government," he told reporters. That was before a White House news conference, three days after the Baghdad briefing, in which President Bush tried to bridge the difference. “What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq,” Bush said. “We know that. And we also know that the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds Force to do what they did.”

Bush then added what sounded like a clear warning to Iranian leaders. “We’re going to protect our troops," he said. When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq, we will deal with them. If we find agents who are moving these devise into Iraq, we will deal with them.”