US delays report on Iranian role in Iraq

The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence. US officials had promised to provide evidence of alleged Iranian activities that led President Bush to announce that the US military would begin taking the offensive against Iranian nationals who threatened US forces. Sean McCormack, the chief State Department spokesman, declined to predict when the report would be issued. "We'll do this on our own timeline," he told reporters on Jan. 31. "And we're going to do it in such a way that it is properly presented, it is clear, and that it is done in such a way that… we don't in any way jeopardize [US officials'] ability to further collect information about these networks." Some officials in Washington are concerned that some of the material may be inconclusive and that other data cannot be released without jeopardizing intelligence sources and methods. They want to avoid repeating the embarrassment that followed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when it became clear that information the administration cited to justify the war was incorrect. Other officials involved in interagency meetings on the issue are concerned that the murky evidence casts a negative light on Iranians who may not be guilty. The Bush administration has charged repeatedly that Iranian agents and military personnel have been bringing in explosives and other weaponry for use in Iraq by Shiite Muslim militants. US intelligence and military officials have said they have substantial evidence of Iranian involvement, but have not made it public. "The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated, and we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts," National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley said. Hadley also said that the administration sought to delay the release of evidence until after a key intelligence report on Iraq was unveiled, so that US officials could place the evidence in the context of the broader conflict. That report, called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), was issued on Feb. 2, concluding that Iraq was deteriorating and faces a bleak future that US efforts may do little to avert. However, the NIE report concluded that Iranian and other outside meddling is "not likely" a major cause of the bloodshed in Iraq, while vaguely asserting that Iranian involvement "intensifies" the conflict. "The involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence… because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics," says the report, compiled by experts from the nation's 16 intelligence agencies. Few doubt that Iran is working to increase its influence inside Iraq, but many of its beneficiaries have been political groups that also are allied with the United States. One US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that plenty of Iranian weapons are "floating around" inside Iraq because of Iranian ties with the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and forces loyal to the Dawa party of US-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Further compounding the problem is the fact that the Bush administration supports not only Dawa's Maliki, but also two major SCIRI leaders, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Abdul Adel Mahdi, who are also in the government (Hakim recently visited the White House). "So what do we do?" the officials said. "Accuse the Iranians of supporting the same guys we support? That's awkward." Many critics have also cast doubt on the administration's claims of the alleged Iranian role in attacks that are carried out on US forces. "The vast majority of Americans who are being killed are still being killed by IEDs [improvised explosive devices] set by Sunnis," said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and White House expert on Persian Gulf affairs. "The evidence that I am seeing does not seem to support the level of rhetoric, let alone the military actions" the administration is taking, Pollack said. Following the release of the NIE report, Gates seemed to concede that US officials can't say for sure whether the Iranian government is involved in assisting the attacks on US personnel in Iraq. "I don't know that we know the answer to that question," he told reporters at the Pentagon.