In an interview on Sunday night, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, Commander, Multi-National Corps-Iraq asserted that Iranian regime’s arms assistance to the Iraqi militias has been going on.
General Odierno said: Well, I would just say this month we had a small reduction in the amount of VFPs that were used against us this month, we continue still to find some caches of rockets, mortars and other things from Iran.
So again, I’m still in the wait-and-see mode. We’ve seen some decline in activity. I’m not ready to say they have in fact our perspective that in fact they have stopped supplying some of these extremist groups done.
General Odierno asserted that there was no decision to release the detained IRGC members in Iraq. He said: There’s some Revolutionary Guards or some Iranians we have in custody. I think total Iranians, it’s somewhere between 10 and 15 that we have.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said that the decline in terrorist operations could not be related to a change in Iranian regime’s attitude in Iraq. He said: We have recently arrested people who have been trained in Iran and this makes the issue complicated. Although the Iranian regime pretends not to be involved in these activities, but regarding our knowledge and experience of that regime, we can’t be optimistic.
