MORE IRAN WEAPON MARKINGS INFO

From the blog "Entropic Memes," which I was thankfully alerted to in the comments. The writer makes a very good observation--on page 11 of the Iran dossier, there is a picture of a mortar casing that was supposedly made in September 2006 and seized in Iraq on September 9, 2006.

While that scenario is not out of the realm of possibility, it certainly seems unlikely.

The writer also links to a site that shows artillery cartridges from various countries. Some Iranian cartridges do in fact have Farsi rather than English markings (on p. 57, for example).

From "Entropic Memes":

"I’m extremely skeptical about the printing on the mortar tubes; if the date codes follow the widely-used standard of mm-yyyy, then the rounds on the left on this page, which were supposedly seized in central Iraq on September 9th, 2006, are a week old or less. Come on, do those look brand new to you?"

Another excellent point the writer makes:

"That brings me to a second point: If you discount the “9-2006″ mortar tubes, the other weapons with date codes in the report, even if “found” in January 2007, were made between March and May, 2006. In other words, they were made before the July-August 2006 conflict in Lebanon. If you were intent on waging war with Iran, the Iranian-made weapons seized by Israel from Hezbollah could be used (and abused) as “evidence” of Iranian involvement in the insurgency. If not, there’s nothing to prove they didn’t come from Hezbollah themselves, who certainly have an interest in furthering the civil war in Iraq."

Very nice work--you should check out the post. Thanks to the commenter who pointed this out!