Bush softens assertions on Iran weapons
Says it's unclear top leaders were involved
WASHINGTON -- US officials from President Bush to a top general in Iraq said yesterday that there was no solid evidence that top officials in Iran had ordered deadly weapons to be sent to Iraq for use against American soldiers, backing away from claims made at a Baghdad presentation by military and intelligence officials earlier this week.
But Bush continued to maintain an aggressive posture toward Tehran, the Iranian capital, insisting that elite Iranian Quds Forces operatives were supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq.
"What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds Force to do what they did," he said.
"What matters is that they're there," he said, asking: "What's worse: that the government knew or that the government didn't know?"
Bush then issued a threat that held the possibility of a direct clash with Iranian units. "When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq," he said at a late morning White House news conference, "we will deal with them."
Quds is a special forces unit of the Revolutionary Guard, which is a separate force from Iran's military, created to safeguard and spread the 1979 revolution that established Shi'ite clerical rule in Iran.
Critics in recent days have accused the administration of overstating assertions of official Iranian involvement in Iraq's violence. On Sunday, US officials in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity alleged that Iranian officials at the "highest levels" of the government in Tehran, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were behind the smuggling of a deadly type of explosive device used against US forces in Iraq.
But during news conferences in Washington and Baghdad yesterday, Bush and Major General William B. Caldwell IV, the chief military spokesman in Baghdad, appeared to step back from that claim, just as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, did in an overseas interview earlier this week.
Caldwell characterized the recent statements about Iranian weapons in Iraq as a diplomatic endeavor to persuade Iranians to stop the flow of such weapons.
"We want to tell [the Iranians], 'You need to stop,' " he said. "We need your assistance."
At a presentation Sunday, US officials showed reporters weapons found in Iraq they said had been made in Iran. But they spoke on condition of anonymity and barred reporters from bringing cameras or recorders.
Yesterday, US officials allowed photographers to scrutinize the evidence. They included rockets with recent date marks that they said could be traced back to munitions factories in Iran, as well as an explosively formed penetrator, a sophisticated roadside bomb that can penetrate armor on vehicles. 