Is Iran trying to stem flow of EFPs into Iraq? By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, November 3, 2007
ARLINGTON, Va. — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that his understanding is Iran has informed the Iraqi government that it will try to stem the flow of Explosively Formed Penetrators into Iraq.
“I don’t know whether to believe them,” Gates said Thursday. “I’ll wait and see.”
He did not say where he learned of these supposed assurances, nor could he say who in Iran might have made such assurances to the Iraqi government.
Known as “EFPs,” the penetrators are a deadly type of roadside bomb that fire a slug of high density metal at between 4,000 and 6,500 miles per hour.
The projectile flies with such velocity that it is up to nine times as powerful as a roadside bomb of similar size made of artillery shells that are rigged to explode.
U.S. government officials have long accused the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of providing EFPs to insurgents in Iraq, but they have not shown a direct link between the Iranian government and EFP attacks in Iraq.
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