WASHINGTON — The Iranian government has decided “at the most senior levels” to rein in the violent Shiite militias it supports in Iraq, a move reflected in a sharp decrease in sophisticated roadside bomb attacks over the past several months, according to the State Department’s top official on Iraq.
Tehran’s decision does not necessarily mean the flow of those weapons from Iran has stopped, but the decline in their use and in overall attacks “has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision,” said David Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said that the decision, “should (Tehran) choose to corroborate it in a direct fashion,” would be “a good beginning” for a fourth round of talks between Crocker and his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad. But he expressed some skepticism about Iran’s motives.
“Is it a conscious policy decision on the part of the Iranian government to use all its influence to bring these things down?” he said, referring to violent incidents. “Or does it involve the Iranians saying, ‘Let’s throttle it back, get everyone comfortable, and then put the pedal down again?’ “
“There has been a reduction in … attacks,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday. But, he said, it remains uncertain whether the decrease is a result of U.S. and Iraqi actions “or whether the Iranians have begun to reduce the level of support. … We don’t have a good feeling or any confidence in terms of how to weigh those different things.”
One U.S. official, familiar with intelligence reports on Iraq but unwilling to be identified by name or agency, said the conclusion that a high-level policy decision was made in Tehran is “in the strike zone” of intelligence assessments. Iran “would definitely like to maintain some degree of influence over the militias” and other players in Iraq, the official said. Iran remains deeply involved in Iraqi political and economic affairs.
The Bush administration has said that Iran maintains a widespread intelligence network in Iraq, with blurred lines between political operatives and those with direct involvement in militia violence. Rather than lessening its influence in Iraq, the official said, Iran has opted for “a creative shift in tactics” as violent militia action has turned many Iraqis against them.
Satterfield agreed that Iran was not acting out of “altruism,” but rather from “alarm at what was being done by the groups they were backing in terms of their own long-term interests.”
The administration is far from declaring a fundamental change in Iran’s attitude toward its objectives in Iraq, or in judging that the new direction is permanent.
But “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, Satterfield said. “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.”
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