This border incident is not news, but was reported in the U.S. media in 2007. A U.S. Army report obtained by U.S. News & World Report acknowledged that it was not known whether the incident occurred on the Iraqi or Iranian side of the border, whether U.S. forces had crossed the border, or whether the attack on U.S. forces was un-provoked. It said that the exact circumstances were still being investigated.

The newly leaked document sheds little more light on these questions than the Army report. While it states that Iranian forces “engaged” the Americans, who then returned fire, it then notes explicitly that the RPG gunner was “trying to engage” them was killed, apparently before he had actually fired on the Americans. It thus remains unclear which side actually opened fire first. The document characterizes the Americans as being nervous while their more comfortable Iraqi counterparts had tea with the Iranians. The Army report had noted that as the Americans fled, the Iraqis stayed behind “for reasons unknown”, but from information given in the newly leaked report, it is clear that the Iraqis did not regard the Iranian soldiers as a threat.

The Times cites a third leaked document asserting that “Iranian intelligence agents within the Badr Corps and Jaish al-Mahdi, two Shiite militias, ‘have recently been influencing attacks on ministry officials in Iraq'”. The same document on the Wikileaks website shows that it also originated in the Multi-National Corp-Iraq Joint Operations Command. It’s not clear whether either threat report originated from interrogations of detainees, or from some other sources, but it is well known that the Bush administration authorized aggressive interrogation techniques, including some amounting to torture, such as waterboarding, to extract “intelligence” information out of prisoners.

The Times continues, stating that “The provision of Iranian rockets, mortars and bombs to Shiite militants has also been a major concern”, and cites another report from 2005 recounting “an effort by the Iraqi border police to stop the smuggling of weapons from Iran”. That report stated that in an effort to stop “insurgent smuggling activities”, the border police “disrupted the movement and recovered a quantity of bomb-making equipment, including explosively formed projectiles (EFPs).” According to the source who apparently tipped off the police, “the smugglers would move from Iran into Iraq by boat”, but he had “no information … about individuals involved or locations within Iran that the explosives may have come from.”

The Mahdi Army planned attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad “using rockets and mortar shells shipped by the Quds Force, according to a report on Dec. 1, 2006. On Nov. 28, the report noted, the Mahdi Army commander, Ali al-Sa’idi, ‘met Iranian officials reported to be IRGC officers at the border to pick up three shipments of rockets.’ A Dec. 27, 2008 report noted one instance when American soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division captured several suspected members of the Jaish al-Mahdi militia and seized a weapons cache, which also included several diaries, including one that explained ‘why detainee joined JAM and how they traffic materials from Iran.'”

The Times does not include the first of these two documents among its own collection on its website, and the version available on the Wikileaks website is heavily redacted. The reporting unit was again the Joint Operations Command, and it’s again unclear what the source for this information was. The later report, which is available at the Times website, notes that the individual in question was a detainee in custody of the Iraq Army, but offers no indication that anything in the diary pointed to involvement of the Iranian government, military, or intelligence in the smuggling operations referred to.

Other reports cited by the Times noted merely that militants “have returned from Iran” or “reportedly traveled to Iran”. One individual was “suspected of collecting information on CF [coalition forces] and passing them to Iranian intelligence agents” (emphasis added).

Such is the nature of the newest information publically available purporting to “Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias”.