BAGHDAD — In echoing the Pentagon's latest accusations of Iranian meddling, the Iraqi government has placed itself firmly where it has long said it does not want to be: caught in the middle between Washington and its neighbor to the east.
Baghdad says it agrees with the United States that Iran has continued to supply weapons to anti-government militants in southern Iraq, including arms with markings indicating they were produced this year. On the other hand, the Iraqi government seems eager to send a message to the Bush administration to back off threats of military action and allow Baghdad to pursue diplomatic solutions more quietly with Tehran.
"We are worried about any escalation between the United States and Iran for a simple reason: We are the weakest party in this game," said Sadiq Rikabi, an advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. "Our policy for our neighbors is to go to them, face to face, speak with them in a planned, frank and direct way about any problem."
In recent days, Iraq's government has followed the United States in stepping up claims that new Iranian-made weapons have been found in the southern city of Basra. The allegations appear to come at a convenient time for both the Shiite-led Iraqi government and its ally, the United States.
With Baghdad still suffering the violent aftereffects of Maliki's offensive against Shiite militias last month, Iranian interference would help explain why Iraqi and U.S. forces have been unable to bring the fighting to a standstill. In the latest clashes, four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in two separate rocket and mortar attacks in Baghdad.
At the same time, Iranian involvement allows U.S. officials to deflect blame for the fighting from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, whom they are counting on to sustain a frayed but officially intact truce he called in August for his Mahdi Army militia. Though privately many soldiers here say the Mahdi militia is involved in the current fighting, publicly, the allegation is that "special groups" who have broken away from Sadr and receive training and aid from Iran are causing the troubles.
Iran, meanwhile, dismissed the latest accusations as "ridiculously false" in a letter to the U.N. Security Council on Monday. "It is not the first time that the international community is witness to the United States' baseless allegations," it said, referring to Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The United States for more than a year has accused Iran of meddling in Iraq. A U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue, said the newest evidence included munitions with 2008 manufacture dates found in Basra during recent fighting between Iraqi and U.S. forces and Shiite militiamen. They bore the hallmarks of Iranian workmanship, including fuses only found on Iranian-made arms, he said.
But in a repeat of a scenario seen here for more than a year, neither the United States nor Iraq has unveiled the evidence, and nobody is saying when or if it will be made public. The U.S. military official said it was up to the Iraqis to decide when and how to present the evidence.
Iraqi advisor Rikabi indicated Monday that using the media as the conduit for airing differences with Iran was reminiscent of the propaganda methods of Hussein, and something the current leadership preferred to avoid.
"We avoid using propaganda against this country or that country," he said. "We're trying to give a new face to Iraq."
As he spoke in his office in Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and most Iraqi government offices, sirens began wailing to warn of incoming rocket fire. Rikabi leaned forward slightly, away from his window, then relaxed after a crash sounded some distance away.
His comments followed the latest and most inflammatory salvo in months to come out of the Pentagon, which says rockets such as those launched into the Green Zone are coming from Shiite militias receiving training, weapons or other aid from Iran. On Friday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, cited an "increasingly lethal and malign influence" of the Iranian government.
Mullen did not give specifics, and it is unclear what prompted the harsh allegations.
A senior State Department official sought to dispel the impression that the Bush administration was seeking to intensify its warnings to Iran. U.S. expressions of concern "have been pretty consistent -- there are spikes on occasion when the Iranians are being provocative," the official said.
A White House official said Basra was a "clarifying moment" for Iraqi government officials, who he said are "tired of the Iranians meddling in Iraq."
