U.S. Says Arms Link Iranians to Iraqi Shiites
BAGHDAD, Feb. 11 — After weeks of internal debate, senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence for the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war, and said those weapons had been used to kill more than 170 Americans in the past three years.
Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor like butter. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.’s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.
In a news briefing held under strict security, those officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. 
and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that senior Iranian leaders had authorized the smuggling of those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference.
Nonetheless that inference, and the anonymity of the officials who made it, was bound to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to lay the groundwork for war with Iran. Tensions between the countries have been ratcheted up by disagreements over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Iranian officials say is focused on peaceful uses but that Washington asserts is for developing nuclear weapons.
The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops. A senior United States military official gave a partial answer, saying that without anonymity, a senior Defense Department analyst who participated in the briefing could not have contributed.
A "senior Defense Department analyst" couldn't ID this ordnance w/o anonymity? What does THAT mean?
Whatever doubts were created about the timing and circumstances of the weapons disclosures, the direct physical evidence presented on Sunday was extraordinary.
The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrive in Iraq in the form of what they described as a “kit” containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts — like a shaped, concave lid that folds into the ball while hurtling toward its target.
For the first time, American officials provided a specific casualty total from these weapons, saying they had killed more than 170 Americans and wounded 620 since June 2004, when one of the devices first killed a service member.
But then the officials went much further, asserting without specific evidence that the Iranian security apparatus, called the Islamic Republican Guard Corps - Quds Force controlled the delivery of the materials to Iraq. And in a further inference, the officials asserted that the Quds Force, sometimes called the I.R.G.C.-Quds, could be involved only with the complicity of the Iraqi government.
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