New Weapons From Iran Turning Up On Mideast Battlefields

A new armor-busting rocket-propelled grenade believed to be of Iranian origin has shown up in Iraq in what may be ‘a hint about things to come,’ the commander of US forces in the Middle East said Tuesday. General John Abizaid said the weapon, an RPG-29, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles. ‘The first time we saw it was not in Iraq. We saw it in Lebanon. So to me it indicates, number one, an Iranian connection,’ he told defense reporters here. ‘It's hard to say in our part of the world that we operate in as to whether or not people have given us a hint about things to come,’ he said. He said only a single RPG-29 has turned up in Iraq so far, and it was unclear how it was smuggled into the country. But he said it was the latest in a number of new and more sophisticated weapons that appear to be moving onto the region's battlefields from Iran. He said longer-range Chinese rockets that looked new also have been found in Iraq.