British troops appear to bearing the brunt of this activity thus far, as they are situated in heavily Shi’ite southern Iraq, already a known destination for the transport of Iranian weapons. From the Telegraph:
Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed.
The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Teheran, according to opponents of the country’s theocratic regime.
Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of “explosively formed projectiles” or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams.
The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.
The Sunday Telegraph revealed in April that Iranian-made devices employing several EFPs, directed at different angles, were being used in Iraq.
And in June, this newspaper obtained the first picture of one of the Iraqi insurgent weapons – designed to fire an armour-piercing EFP – believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers.
British Government scientists have already established that the mines are precision-made weapons thought to have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.
Members of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee have released the details about the three bomb factories gathered by the exile group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI).
Iranians working for the NCRI pinpointed the facilities at three industrial sections called Sattari, Sayad Shirazi and Shiroodi. The factories are in the Lavizan neighbourhood in northern Teheran which is controlled by the country’s defence ministry. The Sattari Industry specialises in anti-tank mines and operates under the aegis of the IRGC’s al-Quds or Jerusalem Force.
[…]
“These sites are close to a military site, known as Lavizan 2, that is now being used for Iran’s nuclear programme. It shows there is a high level of co-ordination by the Iranian regime, which wants to destabilise Iraq to make way for an Islamic
Republic.
“This is not a ragtag workshop in some remote area. These sites are within an area that is one of the most sanitised parts of Teheran which is controlled by the Iranian Defence Ministry.”
[…]
The infra-red triggering mechanism for roadside bombs was perfected by Hezbollah, under Iranian tutelage, against Israeli forces in the 1990s. Mr Jafarzadeh said that in recent weeks Iran had facilitated the movement of cash from Shia groups in Iraq to Hezbollah.