Hey John Kerry, Iran's EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators) Killed Hundreds of U.S. Troops in #Iraq!

A number of outlets are reporting that Secretary of State John Kerry is opening talks on security cooperation with Iran, which is world's biggest state-sponsor of international terrorism.

For Example, at the Los Angeles Times, "U.S. may join Iran in effort to resolve crisis in Iraq"; at Politico, "John Kerry: U.S. open to talks with Iran over Iraq"; and the Wall Street Journal, "Iraq Loses Key City, as U.S. 'Open' to Iran Talks on Crisis."

It boggles the mind that the Obama administration would be seeking an entente with our greatest enemy in the region, or perhaps not, since the president and his treasonous cronies have been scheming to reduce U.S. global power from their first day in office.

Here's National Journal's report from 2011, "Record Number of U.S. Troops Killed by Iranian Weapons":

U.S. military commanders in Iraq say Iranian-made weaponry is killing American troops there at an unprecedented pace, posing new dangers to the remaining forces and highlighting Tehran’s intensifying push to gain influence over post-U.S. Iraq.

June was the deadliest month in more than two years for U.S. troops, with 14 killed. In May, the U.S. death toll was two. In April, it was 11. Senior U.S. commanders say the three primary Iranian-backed militias, Kataib Hezbollah, the Promise Day Brigade, and Asaib al Haq, and their rockets were behind 12 of the deaths in June.

A detailed U.S. military breakdown of June’s casualties illustrates the growing threat posed by Iranian munitions.

Military officials said six of the 14 dead troops were killed by so-called “explosively formed penetrators,” or EFPs, a sophisticated roadside bomb capable of piercing through even the best-protected U.S. vehicles. Five other troops were killed earlier in the month when a barrage of rockets slammed into their base in Baghdad. It was the largest single-day U.S. loss of life since April 2009, when a truck bomb killed five soldiers. The remaining three troops killed in June died after a rocket known as an “improvised rocket-assisted mortar,” or IRAM, landed in a remote U.S. outpost in southern Iraq.

U.S. officials say the EFPs, rockets, and IRAMs all come from neighboring Iran. Tehran denies providing the weaponry to Shia militias operating in Iraq.

“We’re seeing a sharp increase in the amount of munitions coming across the border, some manufactured as recently as 2010,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said in an interview. “These are highly lethal weapons, and their sheer volume is a major concern.”

Buchanan said much of the current weaponry is passing into the country through its formal border crossings with Iran. Current and former American military officers claim that those border crossings are guarded by Iraqi security personnel whose long-standing financial relationships with their Iranian counterparts means they will accept bribes or turn a blind eye in order to allow munitions through.

Back in 2007, the Washington post called EFPs "The Deadliest IEDs." See, "'The single most effective weapon against our deployed forces'":

IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of Sept. 22 had killed or wounded 21,200 Americans, is both a proximate cause and a metaphor for the miscalculation and improvisation that have characterized the war.

EFPs constituted the most serious threat the coalition forces in Iraq. Here's Toby Harnden in 2006, at Telegraph UK, "Three Iranian factories 'mass-produce bombs to kill British in Iraq'":

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 Tehran, 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).

Here are graphic photos of the destruction inflicted by these devices. In your mind's eye, situate yourself behind the controls of a Humvee patrolling Baghdad in 2007. Via Pajamas Media, "How Iran Is Killing U.S. Troops in Iraq." These projectiles explode at more than 2,000 feet-per-second:





And now the U.S. is seeking to give Tehran a lead role in resolving the crisis in Iraq? That'd be like opening talks on cooperation with the German High Command as British and French forces were being evacuated at Dunkirk in 1940.

The Obama administration has sold out American interests and placed the lives of Americans and untold number of Iraqis at risk. The solution is not to let Iran gain greater influence in Iraq. We have the options to reverse the ISIS advance. And we have over a decade of on-the-ground experience in defeating the jihadi extremist. All we need is the requisite leadership to beat back this incursion and avoid an existential defeat in the Middle East.