WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials promised last week to provide evidence of Iranian activities that led President Bush to announce Jan. 10 that U.S. forces would begin taking the offensive against Iranian agents who threatened Americans.
But some officials in Washington are concerned that some of the material may be inconclusive and that other data cannot be released without jeopardizing intelligence sources and methods. They want to avoid repeating the embarrassment that followed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when it became clear that information the administration cited to justify the war was incorrect, said the officials, who described the internal discussions on condition of anonymity.
"We don't want a repeat of the situation we had when [then-Secretary of State] Colin L. Powell went before the United Nations," said one U.S. official, referring to Powell's 2003 presentation on then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons program that relied on evidence later found to be false. "People are going to be skeptical."
The current debate pits some U.S. diplomatic and military officials in Iraq, who are seeking to compile an aggressive case on Iran, against other officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who are urging greater caution, according to the officials, who spoke in the last several days.
The Bush administration has charged repeatedly that Iranian agents and military personnel have been bringing in explosives and other weaponry for use in Iraq by Shiite Muslim militants. U.S. intelligence and military officials have said they have substantial evidence of Iranian involvement, but have not made it public.
The mounting U.S. charges against Iran have been accompanied by the movement of American warships into the Persian Gulf, giving rise to fears of a possible U.S. attack.
U.S. forces arrested a group of Iranians in Baghdad in December and are holding five Iranian officials who were detained Jan. 11 in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. At the same time, the administration has shunned a proposal by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to open direct talks with Iran and Syria as part of a plan to quell the violence in Iraq.
