Major Gen. Rick Lynch at a June press conference. AP Photo/Mohammed Ameen.

by Frank James

The U.S. military in Iraq has a message for Iran: knock it off or we'll do it for you.

Of course, it's a message Iran will likely read as its activities in neighboring Iraq are having the desired effect on U.S. forces.

Major Gen. Rick Lynch, the general who briefed Pentagon-based reporters by videoconference from Iraq today, repeatedly hit one of the key points: there's an Iranian Connection to the death and maiming of many of his soldiers and he wants it to stop.

Lynch, commands Multinational Division-Center and the 3rd Infantry Division which have responsibility for an area around Baghdad the size of W. Virginia.

For many months, U.S. commanders have complained about weapons from Iran that are being used with lethal effect against U.S. and Iraqi troops so that wasn't new.

But it took up much of today's briefing from Iraq and clearly weighs heavily on the U.S. commanders. Lynch's growing exasperation with the situation was almost palpable. So it shouldn't be ignored.

Here's a large chunk of what Lynch said about the Iranian influence on the violence he's seeing in his sector.

We see Iranian activity through our area in three levels. First, U.S. soldiers are coming under attack from deadly weapons originating from Iran; specifically, Iranian rockets and Iranian-manufactured components for explosively formed projectiles. Second, we believe some, not all, Shi'a militants are being trained by Iran to use these weapons and then they're passing that training on to others inside of Iraq.

And third, we believe that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are facilitating training as well as transfer of weapons and munitions. We assess that there are 50 or so Iranian and Iraqi operatives working for Iran in our area, about 20 of which who we are actively targeting. These operatives fall in the same group that helped militants carry out the January 2007 attack against the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center, resulting in the death of five of our soldiers.

Now, one way or another, Sunni militants are also getting their hand on this Iranian technology. Whether that's a direct hand-off or black-market activity, we don't know, but both sides -- the Sunni extremists and the Shi'a extremists -- have it and are using that technology to kill Americans and Iraqis, and that's got to stop. And we're using every means available as to monitor and take down these networks.

The scale of the Iranian problem is especially troubling when you look at the numbers of weapons we found and destroyed since the start of the surge. We have captured more than 117 Iranian-made munitions since April the 4th. Let me tell you about some specific instances.

Just over two weeks ago, soldiers from our 3rd Brigade Combat Team conducted a raid on a militant house in the town of Nahrawan, which is about 20 miles east of Baghdad on the east side of the Tigris River. They arrested one of our division's most valued targets, high- value targets, and he acted as a link between Iran and the Jaish al- Mahdi militia. He was the main Shi'a conduit in that region for getting Iranian EFPs and rockets into Baghdad, and his capture was a big blow to that network.

When we found him, we also discovered an insurgent video they were making that showed 46 Iranian rockets lined up to be fired at one of our U.S. forward operating bases. In fact, several of those rockets shown in the video actually fired and hit some of our bases on the 11th of July, killed one of my soldiers and wounded 15 others.

Just last weekend Iraqi army scouts recovered a cache of Iranian mines in the Wasat province after receiving a tip from an Iraqi civilian. We believe these mines were meant to kill coalition and Iraqi security forces due to the proximity of this weapons cache to one of our camps.

We are finding Iranian-made munitions and weapons systems throughout our area. But the fact remains we have a 125-mile border with Iran in the Wasat province, and that continues to be a concern.

We are up against a new wave of lethality sponsored by the enemies of the people of Iraq and its government. There have been 48 EFP attacks directed against my troops since the operation began in April, killing eight of my soldiers. We've also seen an increase in the use of precision and rocket attacks, and there have been 66 of those attacks since April, killing five of my soldiers.

There are several significant features associated with the 48 EFPs we found in NMD-C (sic; MND-C) which are unique to Iranian design, manufacture and distribution methods.

We're doing things like looking at tool marks on these EFPs and the source of the explosives and the manufacturing capability, and those EFP components are coming to Iran -- coming from Iran into Iraq, and they're killing Iraqis, and they're killing the coalition soldiers.

The good news is that we're having some success in bringing down these networks and countering these weapons' effectiveness. We've found and cleared 728 IEDs, to include EFPs, since the surge began. And in that same period, we've located and destroyed 248 weapons caches.

We're also bolstering the government of Iraq's efforts along the Iranian border. My soldiers are working with the Iraqi border security force, training them and helping them.

There is one point of entry into Iraq from the Wasat province -- into the Wasat province, and Iraqi border forces check trucks making that crossing. In the near future, 2,000 Republic of Georgia soldiers will secure six checkpoints, allowing us to thoroughly inspect every truck crossing along the main westbound route towards Baghdad. So every truck that comes into the Wasat province, from Iran into Iraq, will be stopped and searched in total by these great soldiers from Georgia.

Later in the briefing, Barbara Starr of CNN asked Lynch about the quality of the evidence for the alleged Iranian ties.

STARR: General Lynch, Barbara Starr from CNN. I wanted to ask you to follow up on several of the points you made about Iran. What is your real feeling right now, when you said maybe 50 or so Iranians and Iraqis influenced by Iran, these fighters that you're seeing? How many Iranians do you think are in your area? What do you think they're really doing?

And on the question of weapons, if you're looking at things like factory marks and manufacturing, are you convinced yet that you can tie this back to finished weapons or components coming in with the support of the Iranian government?

It sounds like you're awfully frustrated and concerned about this growth of Iranian influence.

GEN. LYNCH: Yeah, thanks for that, Barbara. I am indeed concerned. You know, we are in combat operations against Shi'a extremists, Sunni extremists and marked Iranian influence, and since we've been fighting this fight, since the 4th of April, we've lost 71 magnificent soldiers. They've paid the ultimate sacrifice, so I'm focused on taking out all the enemy. I got bad guys from all flavors. So right now, this focus is on the Iranian influence.

What I believe in my battlespace is I've got IRGC surrogates, people that have been trained by the IRGC in Iran who've come back in Iraq to conduct acts of violence, and I believe I got some members of the IRGC, some Iranians, who are working in our battlespace. And what they do is they transit the battlespace. They don't come in and they stay, but they're going back and forth. The primary concern, as I say, is the number 50; the good majority of those are IRGC surrogates. They're operatives that have been trained by the IRGC.

Having said that, I do believe that at any given time, I got up to about 20 Iranians working in our battlespace, you know, either training Iraqis to conduct acts of violence or conducting those acts of violence themselves, and we're working detailed targeting on all those people.

And then to your question about the munitions -- I mean, we study all these things. As we come across IEDs, you know the found-and- cleared IEDs -- we got opportunities to check them for fingerprints, put them under microscopes, and what we're finding is distinct marks that could only be created by machinery and capabilities coming out of Iran. So there's no doubt in my mind when I talk about EFP components being manufactured in Iran and coming into Iraq and then assembled inside of Iraq to attack our soldiers and Iraqi security force soldiers and innocent Iraqis, and that's most troublesome.

And this -- as I talked about the attack on FOB Hammer, there were 46 Iranian rockets lined up with Iranian timers to kill my soldiers out on FOB Hammer. And luckily, a great UAV operator was flying his UAV around, he saw those Iranian rockets, he turned to his leaders and said, "Hey, I think we got this problem." A leader sent ground forces out there, and bigger than Dallas, there's the rockets, and we were able to disconnect those rockets before they fired.

But when you take those rockets and you show them to experts in munitions, EODs -- they look at their documents, they focus on the munitions and say, "Those had to come from Iran." And that has to stop. And that's what I'm trying to do in Wasat province now with the Georgians. We'll set up those checkpoints so when trucks come from Iran into Iraq, we'll search every one of those trucks.

There will be no stone unturned, because if there is a rocket in there, or an EFP component there, we're going to find it before it hurts one of my soldiers.

The U.S. military is in a challenging position. On one hand, under the Bush Administration, U.S. foreign policy is to underscore whenever there's a chance the bad behavior emanating from Iraq in a hope to further isolate the Teheran theocracy in the world community. Lynch's complaints about Iranian made weapons fit that strategy.

But the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps could also read the voluble comments from Lynch and other U.S. military officials in recent months as acknowledgement that their proxy war in Iraq against the U.S. is causing Americans real pain. In which case, from the Iranian point of view, why should they stop?