Iranian weapons in Iraq is not news

On Sunday afternoon, a group of 30 journalists from the world's biggest media agencies met in a room in Baghdad with three representatives from the United States.

The officials refused to give their names or go on the record about what they were about to say, but then proceeded to unveil a table on which was placed various types of roadside bombs, ammunition and mortar rounds.

The officers claimed the weapons were manufactured in Iran and had been responsible for killing 170 Americans in Iraq since 2004.

The officials' implication was that Iran has been responsible for the U.S. military's failure in Iraq because they had supplied the weapons to Iraqi militias that were being used to kill American troops.

I don't buy it for a second. The Bush administration is clearly up to one of its old tricks, pointing its finger at Iran to drum up support for whatever its next "mission" intends to be (maybe sending more troops to Iraq, or maybe even Iran.)

It makes perfect sense for the Bush Administration to single out the Iranian government. The more Americans feel that Iran is "evil," the easier it will be for the Bush administration to deflect blame for its failure in Iraq onto someone else — just like the Americans blamed the Russians and Chinese for providing the Vietnamese with weapons.

Bush is looking for an excuse and Iran seems like a good bet. Iran's government forces women to wear head scarves, tries to develop nuclear technologies, tortures political and human rights activists and supplies terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas with weapons.

But it's certainly no secret that the Iranians are providing weapons. Everyone knows that; it makes perfect sense. The Iranian government is Shiite and provides weapons for the Shiite Iraqi militias. The Sunni militias in Iraq (who are fighting the Shiites) receive funding and arms from the Saudi Arabian Sunni government.

So what is the big deal?

More than 3,000 American troops have been killed in Iraq since the invasion and more than 200,000 Iraqis (mostly civilians) have died since the invasion in 2003.

The fact that 170 Americans were killed using weapons made in Iran seems trivial. If the Bush administration wants to play the international blame game, it should start blaming Saudi Arabia, which funds the Sunni militias that kill the majority of American troops.

What's more is that many of the Sunni militias stole weapons from Saddam Hussein's secret weapons stockpiles after the 2003 invasion.

Saddam bought those weapons with money President Ronald Reagan gave to Iraq when Saddam was a U.S. ally in the 1980s and was fighting Iran in the bloody Iran-Iraq War.

If Americans want to know who paid for the weapons being used to kill their troops in Iraq today, it's a complicated answer — but some Americans are being killed by Iraqis with 20-year-old AK47s paid for by the U.S. government.

My point is simply that it and has been obvious for at least a year that Iran was supplying Iraqi Shiite militias with weapons.

The information was always out there and the Bush administration simply decided that they wanted to raise the issue this week. It's always a good idea to release a spin story on a Sunday; that way it gets a full week to play out in the media.

If the world's newspapers really want a story, they should take a broader view of the situation and not report back the sound bites fed to them by three no-name U.S. military officers in Baghdad.

Newspaper reporters might consider writing articles about the irony that some Shiite militias are taking funding, arms and training from both the Americans and Iranians.

Sunday's announcement that Iran sends weapons to Iraqi militias wasn't anything new and as the saying goes, old news is no news.

Reach columnist Jake Sommer at news@thedaily.washington.edu.