
The original story, broached in December 2005 by the BBC, amongst others (with the Telegraph following in January) was that the Austrian government had authorised the sale of 800 Steyr Mannlicher HS50 rifles to the Iranian government, supposedly for use by the National Iranian Police Organisation, which claimed they were for anti-drug smuggling operations.
It now appears that, less than two months after deliveries began to Iran, an Iraqi insurgent shot dead an American officer in an armoured vehicle, using the weapon.
Now, according to The Telegraph, in the last six months US forces have discovered small numbers of the rifles but, in the last 24 hours, a raid in Baghdad brought the total to more than 100 seized from Iraqi insurgents.
The fact that these rifles were sold directly to the Iranian government strongly reinforces the US assertions that Iran is actively providing aid to the insurgency in Iraq – a claim made last Sunday by "senior US defence officials" who claimed that at least 170 US and allied soldiers had been killed since June 2004, using Iranian made or supplied weapons.

The figure of 170 is relatively modest compared with the 3,113 US troops who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, and the 132 fatalities suffered by Britain over the same period. Furthermore, the charge was soon rejected by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "baseless", the release of the evidence by the Americans being attributed to a ploy to rack up the tension between the US and Iran, to justify a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

If you take the claims at face value, Reynolds wrote, the reason is that only now has the evidence become substantial enough to be made public. "The number of attacks is said to have grown as well, so that is another explanation put forward for going public now. A trend has been identified about which information should be given."

In the murky world of Middle East politics, any of this could be true, and more. It rarely pays to take things at face value. But one thing is evident. The US was perfectly right to protest at the sale of the rifles to Iran and to impose sanctions on Austria in December year last.
And how typical it was of those wonderful, peace-loving "Europeans" at the time to complain that the US action "could hinder diplomatic efforts by the EU to end the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme."
No doubt they were thinking that it was totally unreasonable to object to Austria being allowed to sell these murderous weapons in circumstances where they could be used to kill US soldiers. EU officials are doubtless thinking that these gung-ho Americans should be thoroughly ashamed. The surprising thing is that the Telegraph has not made that point for them.
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