EFP's From Iran?

By Cernig

Finally, a mainstream media outlet willing to actually be sceptical about Bush administration allegations over Iranian meddling in Iraq. TIME magazine's Mark Kukis and Abigail Hauslohner take a look at those allegations and describe them as "based on speculation".

In particular, the whole narrative of explosively formed penetrators - EFPs - is suspect, as I've been saying for over a year now.

Indeed, the U.S. allegations appear to be based on speculation, spurred by the appearance about a year ago of a new breed of roadside bomb in Iraq. Explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, proved effective at piercing American armor by firing a concave copper disc from a makeshift cannon, which transformed the slug midair into a molten jet of super-heated metal. Accusations that Iran was shipping the things into Iraq grew louder as U.S. casualties from the weapon rose. But no concrete evidence has emerged in public that Iran was behind the weapons. U.S. officials have revealed no captured shipments of such devices and offered no other proof.

Instead, the Americans argued their case publicly with deductive reasoning: the copper slugs used in EFPs had to be precisely tooled with a heavy press in order to work properly, they said; no such heavy presses were in operation in Iraq, according to the Americans, therefore the slugs had to have been machined in Iran and moved into Iraq. It is, however, not impossible that such heavy presses may well be operating in Iraq. Three major cities in southern Iraq (Basra, Karbala and Najaf) have gone without a significant U.S. military presence for more than a year. These cities, which U.S. officials believe form hubs for the flow of arms into Baghdad, may indeed have such presses.

Not just those cities. It only takes ten minutes or so of Google search to uncover several companies like Atconz or Rajesh Machine Tools who boast of being able to import exactly the machines used into Iraq and the Iraqi government itself has been all over the globe at trade fairs touting the many Iraqi heavy manufacturing companies claiming capability in heavy machining and machine press work.

The U.S. military's narrative falls at the first hurdle - and then stumbles on to fall at several others. It is inconceivable that the military believes its own claim that there are no heavy presses in Iraq, what is easier to believe is that the stenographic media haven't bothered to check that claim for themselves.

Comments

[jeffreyw]

Presses are not the only way to turn these copper lenses out, they can be made on a lathe.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Jeffrey. Lathes are also found in abundance in Iraq.

Regards, C