Bill Roggio has up his own analysis of the situation:
The suspicion is the Islamic Republic of Iran is behind supplying al-Qaeda with the needed weapons, training and logistical support to supply and field a successful anti-aircraft force, much as the United States provided the mujahideen with Stingers in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The United States and Iran have escalated the war in the shadows in Iran. After the United States raided Iranian ‘diplotmatic missions’ in Baghdad and Irbil, Iran is strongly believed to have conducted an attack on the provincial center in Karbal, which resulted in the death and kidnapping of five U.S. soldiers. An Iranian ‘diplomat’ was kidnapped off the streets of Baghdad today, and Iran is blaming the U.S.
During the Baghdad and Irbil raids, the U.S. detained seven members of Iran’s Qods Force (Iranian special forces) and captured documentation which proved Iran was supporting both the Sunni and Shia insurgent and death squads, as well as Al_Qaeda and Ansar al-Sunnah. Mines, which are killing U.S. troops, have been traced back directly to Iran, while weapons shipments have been interdicted while transiting the border.
You can read the rest here. And via Powerline:
The emergence in Iraq of more effective shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and anti-aircraft gunfire in Iraq is a development discussed yesterday by Ralph Peters in his New York Post column. I understand that the surface-to-air missiles are SAM-16s. I also understand that the weapons that recently brought down the four helicopters involve some kind of clustered anti-aircraft gunfire. Consistent with Peters’s reporting, I understand that the SAMs and other new anti-aircraft weapons come from Iran.
The linked CNN story on the helicopter downings quotes a statement regarding the weapons from the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq. In today’s New York Sun, Nibras Kazimi reports on the emergence of al Qaeda’s new man in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. (The name sounds like a nom de guerre that can be translated as Daddy Baghdadi.) Al-Baghdadi leads al Qaeda in Iraq in a front group called “the Islamic State of Iraq.” According to Kazimi, al Qaeda has taken over the Sunni insurgency and issued a demand for American surrender:
“We order you to withdraw your forces immediately. But the withdrawal must be via troop transport trucks and passenger planes whereby each soldier is allowed to carry his own weapon only. They may not withdraw any of the heavy military equipment and the military bases must be handed over to the mujaheddin of the Islamic State and the duration of the withdrawal may not exceed a month.”
Kazimi comments: “Not very favorable terms, but I wonder whether some in the Senate would go for it anyway.”
