You will remember the U.S. propaganda campaign around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That figure’s media picture was build up by the U.S. occupation in Iraq as ‘leader of the Iraqi resistance’. That this was propaganda was so obvious that I had no trouble to document and satirize it here back in June 2005. Finally in April 2006 the ‘serious’ media found out too. Tom Ricks wrote how the Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi:

One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that [General] Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

After the Ricks story the Zarqawi boogeyman’s usefulness had expired and two month later the military claimed to have finally killed him in an air attack.

Last week another PSYOPS campaign was laid to rest. But unlike with Zarqawi this one is buried to keep it alive. And the media, including McClatchy’s (former Knight Ridder) Washington Bureau, falls for it.

Since 2004 the U.S. government and military spread a meme about Iran as providing Explosive Formed Penetrators to the Iraqi resistance. Iran has always rejected the allegation. EFPs are machined copperplates used in powerful roadside bombs against U.S. military vehicles.

For quite a while this story has been debunked by reports about EFP manufacturing in Iraq. These were substantiated, while the "Iran provides EFPs" meme was never proven by any evidence.

There were pieces in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and by Reuters. Doubts about the Iran origin of EFPs have also been raised in the New York Times. NBC news had U.S. officials at least partly walking back their claims. The Columbia Journalism Review, Inter Press Service and Newshogger Cernig ran good summary stories including many sources. We also discussed the ‘evidence’ here.

Still the PSYOPS campaign was kept up and the meme repeated over and over by the usual propaganda (pdf) tools.

A recent New Yorker piece finally pulled the plug. Early October Seymour Hersh wrote:

David Kay, a former C.I.A. adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations, told me that his inspection team was astonished, in the aftermath of both Iraq wars, by “the huge amounts of arms” it found circulating among civilians and military personnel throughout the country. He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded American cluster bombs.

Why would Iran take the risk to provide stuff to the Iraqi resistance when "stockpiles" of said stuff were and are available in Iraq anyway?

This was evidence that the earlier U.S. claims, which were never supported by any physical evidence like a catch at the border, were most likely unfounded. David Kay is an impeccable source on the issue. The military had a serious problem.

After Hersh’s story the EFP case had to be laid to rest without saying that it has always been a lie. A casket was needed and a funeral pompous enough to hide the fact that the casket is empty.

In early November Secretary of Defense Gates announced the near death of the patient:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that his understanding is Iran has informed the Iraqi government that it will try to stem the flow of Explosively Formed Penetrators into Iraq.

“I don’t know whether to believe them,” Gates said Thursday. “I’ll wait and see.”

He did not say where he learned of these supposed assurances, nor could he say who in Iran might have made such assurances to the Iraqi government.

Two weeks later we hear the funeral eulogy:

Iran seems to be honoring a commitment to stem the flow of deadly weapons into Iraq, contributing to a more than 50 percent drop in the number of roadside bombs that kill and maim American troops, a U.S. general said Thursday.
[…]
Simmons, a deputy commander of Multinational Corps-Iraq, told reporters that the number of roadside bombs either found or exploded nationwide had fallen from 3,239 in March to 1,560 last month.

To bury the "EFP from Iran" meme it is now alleged, without any proof and logic, that Iran has halted a flow of weapons it never provided in the first place.

Why do I say without logic?

General Simmons tries to drag a causality from a stemmed flow of arms to lower attack rates.

But the attack rates in Iraq are lower because the U.S. military is currently buying off the Sunni resistance. The Shia resistance under al-Sadr has been put to a temporary rest for an organizational overhaul. The attack rates in Iraq are lower because the ‘surge’ is a ‘success’.

If the level of resistance is lower, as Petreaus in Congress asserted over and over, the number of roadside bombs must be lower too. That is a primary causality. To now link the lower number of bombs to an alleged stop of an alleged import of weapons does not make logical sense. There are still tons of weapons in Iraq.

Just three weeks ago a weapon cache with 124 ready to use EFPs and 159 additional EFP copper disks was found in Diyala province. How does that fact get along with General Simmons claim about a decrease in EFP uses as a consequence of lower supply from Iran? It doesn’t fit.

The Zaqrqawi boogeyman was largely PSYOPS disinformation.
The "EFPs from Iran" tale was a PSYOPS campaign.
The "less attacks because Iran stops EFP-flow" story is part of a PSYOPS campaign.

This is obvious. That’s why I am sad that a news outlet like McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, with has been a remarkably truthful source on the whole war on Iraq campaign so far, is falling for the story.

Jonathan Landay and Nancy Youssef write: Iran stops sending a deadly weapon to its allies in Iraq

Iran
appears to have stopped shipping the deadliest type of weapons used
against U.S. troops in Iraq after a European government confronted
Tehran with proof that the weapons came from Iranian factories and
Iraqi officials warned their neighbor that instability in Iraq affects
the entire region, U.S., Western and Iraqi officials said.

The story is based on an unnamed ‘Western diplomat’ and anonymous ‘U.S. intelligence officials’. It includes not a single doubt or caveat on the primary U.S. military assertion of EFPs from Iran to Iraq.

But it includes and confuses (likely false) claims of another weapon flow. This one from Iran to the Taliban in Afghanistan. But again there is no proof at all. Just anonymous sources who have ‘interests’.

The cleric Shia Iran helped to install the U.S. supported Karzai government in Kabul and it helped to ouster the puritanical Sunni Taliban who killed their Hazara brethren. How likely is it that Iran would provide weapon to the Taliban? To kill more Hazara? Isn’t it much more likely that claims about such weapon smuggling are just another PSYOPS campaign directed against Iran?

Why do Youssef and Landay stenograph such junk claims without any caveat?