WASHINGTON (AFP) – A senior US diplomat said Iran has reined in Shiite militias in Iraq, causing a sharp drop in roadside bomb attacks in recent months, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The Iranian leadership "at the most senior levels" has moved to restrain the Shiite militias it supports in neighboring Iraq, David Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told the Post.
While the flow of weapons from Iran may not have stopped, the decline in overall attacks "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision," Satterfield said in an interview.
The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said that Iran’s decision, "should (Tehran) choose to corroborate it in a direct fashion," would be "a good beginning" for a fourth round of talks between US and Iranian officials in Baghdad.
A scheduled mid-December US-Iran meeting on Iraq was postponed, but Crocker said he expects that the two sides will convene "in the next couple of weeks."
One unnamed US official told the paper the view of the senior American diplomats in Iraq was generally in keeping with the thrust of intelligence analyses on Iraq.
Iran "would definitely like to maintain some degree of influence over the militias" and other players in Iraq, the same official said.
Rather than scaling back its influence in Iraq, Iran has chosen "a creative shift in tactics" as violent militias have sparked resentment among many Iraqis, including Shiites, the official added.
Satterfield also said Iran was not acting out of "altruism" but "alarm at what was being done by the groups they were backing in terms of their own long-term interests."
The diplomat’s comments came after a report from US intelligence agencies this month that concluded Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, contradicting past statements from President George W. Bush and his top aides.
The Bush administration has frequently accused Iran of fomenting chaos and violence in Iraq but Satterfield said a steady decline in sophisticated roadside bomb attacks seemed to indicate a change in course.
He said that "we have seen such a consistent and sustained diminution in certain kinds of violence by certain kinds of folks that we can’t explain it solely" by internal factors in Iraq.
"If you add those all together, your calculus doesn’t come out unless you also add in that the Iranians at a command level must have said or done something, as well."
Satterfield declined to offer specific evidence but, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said: "We are confident that decisions involving the strategy pursued by the IRGC are made at the most senior levels of the Iranian government."
The administration has used the same wording previously to argue that IRGC training and supplies for militias in Iraq were guided by the Iranian regime’s top leadership.
The Defense Department has adopted a more cautious view, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying Friday it remained unclear whether Iran had stopped the bomb attacks or whether better intelligence and tactics contributed to the change.
"I think the jury is out," Gates told reporters.
The Pentagon said in a report Tuesday that Iran continues to funnel weapons and supplies to Shiite insurgents in Iraq.
Iran has consistently denied providing Iraqi militias with funding or training.
