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Iran still fuels unrest in Iraq, Odierno says

Iran represents the greatest long-term threat to the stability of Iraq — but also could take a new tack and play a “huge role” in helping Iraq become independently viable, the former No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday.

“I do worry about that as a long-term threat,” Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno told Pentagon reporters. Odierno, who turned Multi-National Corps-Iraq over to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin on Feb. 14 and has been nominated to become the Army’s vice chief of staff, said his greatest concerns about a reversal of security gains made in Iraq over the past year center around the threat of a rise in intra-Shiite violence.

But he also cited “external influences,” naming Iran as the prime example.

“That is the long-term issue and I think we have to ... understand that,” Odierno said. “Iran … should stop supporting these surrogate organizations that continue to attempt to destabilize the government of Iraq.”

Referring to the recent two-day state visit with Iraqi senior leaders by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Odierno said: “Hopefully, that’s what they talked about behind closed doors.”

Ahmadinejad was quoted in news accounts as declaring a “new chapter” in Iran-Iraq relations — the two nations fought a bitter eight-year war during the 1980s — and that “accusations about others” by U.S. officials “will increase the Americans’ problems in the region. They will have to accept the facts in the area. The Iraqi people do not like the Americans.”

Countered Odierno: “It’s easy to come in and say, ‘Hey, look how things are, they like us better than the Americans.’ Well, you know, that’s because maybe they’re causing some of the problems” that are fueling the dislike for Americans among some Iraqis.

Odierno, who said President Bush asked for his thoughts on Iran during a White House visit Monday, said the U.S. needs to keep up the pressure “by not letting them off the hook about what they’re doing.”

“You know, talk about it,” he said. “When they operate inside of Iraq … we need to keep constant pressure on their surrogate networks. And as we find these surrogate networks, let people know what we found, so people don’t forget what Iran is doing.”

The Iranian government, Odierno said, has “a huge role to play in Iraq — as helpful partners in the Middle East and to the Iraqi government. What they have to stop doing is training surrogates, funding surrogates and supplying weapons to them — which they are still doing today.”

He said there is “pretty clear evidence” that Iranian groups are still training of Iraqi Shiite insurgents in the use of explosively formed projectiles, the most powerful roadside bombs, parts of which U.S. officials have said were manufactured in Iran.

“We’re still finding a lot of EFPs inside Iraq,” Odierno said. “Whether they’re still shipping them in or whether they’ve been there for a while, I can’t tell you.”

Odierno also said he had heard reports that Iran is providing support “at a small level” to al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni groups, but said he had no hard evidence that this is true.

Iran’s continued meddling in Iraq, Odierno said, “is about keeping, in my opinion, a weak government [in] Iraq. And I think Iran benefits from that. … That’s something we have to just look at as we move forward.”