AS MAX BOOT HAS POINTED OUT, THE IRANIANS ARE NOT OUR FRIENDS:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. “There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval,” says a senior official.

What I continue to be puzzled by is why the Bush Administration has taken such a low-key attitude toward Iran when its role in fomenting problems in Iraq — and its unrelenting hostility to the United States — has been obvious for years. I had assumed that a key reason for invading Iraq in the first place was to let us put pressure on the mullahs, something that we don’t seem to have even tried to do.