Iran Update II

From Patrick Cockburn, (hat tip to JuanCole).

The allegations by senior but unnamed U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The U.S. has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran. The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 U.S. soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children's toys or to open garage doors.

As Cockburn correctly notes why do we assume these type of devices can not be built in Iraq? The EFPs that is.

Cockburn (my emphasis):

During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the United States and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces. The U.S. stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position four years ago. Then, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.