U.S. says Iran increasing support of insurgents

updated 10:58 a.m. ET April 25, 2008

BAGHDAD - The top U.S. military official accused Iran of increasing arms and training support to insurgents in Iraq as well as militants battling U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Defense Department news conference that he has "no smoking gun" proof that the highest leadership in the Iranian government has approved the stepped up aid to insurgents who are killing U.S. and Iraqi forces.

But he said it is clear that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate, including to support insurgents during the recent fighting in Basra in southern Iraq.

"It's not just weapons," Mullen said of Iranian support. "They continue to train Iraqis in Iran to come back and fight Americans in the coalition," he added, saying U.S. intelligence is seeing similar Iranian aid for militants and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I just don't see any evidence of them backing off. And Basra highlighted a lot of that," Mullen said of Iran.

Still, Mullen added: "I have no smoking gun that could prove the highest (Iranian) leadership is involved in this."

Mullen said the U.S. is not taking any options off the table — including military — to counter the Iranian threat, but he said the Bush administration believes the best approach remains continued diplomacy and discussions with Iran's government, which has said it has been trying to reduce any such support to insurgents across the border in neighboring Iraq.

'Silent victims'
The new allegations emerged as the United Nations said insurgent groups and militias in Iraq are recruiting children as suicide bombers.

Echoing concerns expressed recently by the U.S. military, Radhika Coomaraswamy, U.N. special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, said her recent five-day trip to Iraq convinced her that the country's children are "the silent victims of the ongoing violence."

"Since 2004, an increasing number of children have been recruited into various militias and insurgent groups, including as suicide bombers," said Coomaraswamy in a statement released Friday after she returned to Amman, Jordan. She did not reveal the source of her information.

Children trained to kill?
The U.S. military released several videos at the beginning of February seized from suspected al-Qaida in Iraq hideouts that showed militants training children who appeared as young as 10 to kidnap and kill. The U.S. military said at the time that al-Qaida in Iraq teaches teenage boys how to build car bombs and sends them on suicide missions.

Young children have been used as decoys in Iraq, but they are rarely the ones behind the attacks. Last March, police said children were used in a car bombing in which the driver gained permission to park in a busy shopping area after pointing out that he was leaving his kids in the back seat. The children were killed along with three Iraqi bystanders.

Coomaraswamy urged "religious and community leaders of Iraq to send one clear message to Iraqi children: Stay out of the violence and go back to school."

She said only 50 percent of primary school-age children were attending class, down from 80 percent in 2005. Approximately 1,500 children are known to be held in detention facilities, she added.

The U.N. official called on "all parties to the conflict in Iraq to strictly adhere to international humanitarian standards for the protection of children and to immediately release any children under the age of 18 years who are associated with their forces in any way.

Meanwhile, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for an end to clashes between his militia fighters and Iraqi troops, saying that his threat of an "open war" applied only to U.S.-led foreign forces.

In a sermon read by an aide during Friday prayers in Baghdad's militia stronghold of Sadr City, the cleric also urged Iraqi soldiers and policemen "not to support the occupiers in combating your brothers."

Al-Sadr issued a "final warning" to the government Saturday to halt its crackdown against the Mahdi Army or face an "open war until liberation."

The statement on al-Sadr's Web site singled out the Iraqi government led by fellow Shiite Nouri al-Maliki, accusing him of selling out to the Americans. Friday's sermon appeared to be an attempt to ease tensions.

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