Evidence on Iran is On the Way

We’ve been talking for a while about the accumulating evidence tying Iran to some of the deadliest munitions being used in Iraq, as well as to the training of some Iraqi insurgents. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Gates said that the U.S. has evidence of Iranian involvement:

Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration’s first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

This is old news, of course. What’s interesting is that the administration has been working for some time on assembling a dossier to demonstrate Iran’s role:

National security officials in Washington and Iraq have been working for weeks on a presentation intended to provide evidence for Bush administration claims of what they say are Iran’s meddlesome and deadly activities.
Officials say the materials – which in their classified form include slides and some two inches of documents – provide evidence of Iran’s role in supplying Iraqi militants with highly sophisticated and lethal improvised explosive devices and other weaponry. Among the weapons is a roadside bomb known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” which can pierce the armor of Abrams tanks with nearly molten-hot charges. One intelligence official said the U.S. is “fairly comfortable” it knows where the explosives came from.
The Iran dossier also lays out alleged Iranian efforts to train Iraqis in military techniques.

According to the Associated Press, release of this evidence is being delayed in order to make sure that it is as accurate as possible, and to ensure that intelligence sources and methods are not compromised. Both are laudable objectives, of course. Still, I can’t help wondering whether the administration is delaying its release of the evidence because, once the facts are laid before the American people, it will be hard to defer a decision on what to do about it.
UPDATE: This version of the AP story says that some Congressmen have been shown evidence of Iranian involvement. Joe Lieberman is quoted as saying, “I’m convinced from what I’ve seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers.”
Via Power Line News.

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