Gates links bombs’ markings to Iran

MUNICH, Germany – 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.

While the Bush administration and military officials have repeatedly said Iranians have been tied to terrorist bombings in Iraq, they have said little about evidence to bolster such claims, including any documents and other items collected in recent raids in Iraq.

Yet, government officials say there is some disagreement about how much to make public to support the administration’s case. Intelligence officials worry the sources of their information could dry up.

Among the evidence the administration will present are weapons that were seized in U.S.-led raids on caches around Iraq, one military official in Washington said.

Other evidence includes documents captured when U.S.-led forces raided an Iranian office Jan. 11 in Irbil in northern Iraq, the official said. Tehran said it was a government liaison office, but the U.S. military said five Iranians detained in the raid were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.

Speaking in Seville, Spain, on Friday before traveling to Munich, Gates said that markings on explosives provide “pretty good” evidence that Iranians are supplying either weapons or technology for Iraqi extremists.

“I think there’s some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found” that point to Iran, he said.

Gates’ remarks left unclear how the U.S. knows the serial numbers are traceable to Iran and whether such weapons would have been sent to Iraq by the Iranian government or by private arms dealers.

Explosives have been a leading killer of U.S. forces in Iraq, where more than 3,000 U.S. troops have died in the nearly 4-year-old war.