If Iranian agents are behind the murder of US soldiers in Kerbala, some things ought to explode on the Iranian side of the border. Bill Roggio has been checking with intel sources:

The American Forces Information Service provides the details of the attack in Karbala. Based on the sophisticated nature of the raid, as well as the response, or cryptic non-responses, from multiple military and intelligence sources, this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. My sources agreed this is far too sophisticated an operation for the Mahdi Army or Badr Corps, while al-Qaeda in Iraq would have a difficult time mounting such an operation in the Shia south. “The Karbala Government Center raid the other day was a little too professional for JAM [Jaish al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi Army],” according to a military source.

This raid required specific intelligence, in depth training for the agents to pass as American troops, resources to provide for weapons, vehicles, uniforms, identification, radios and other items needed to successfully carry out the mission. Hezbollah’s Imad Mugniyah executed a similar attack against Israeli forces on the Lebanese border, which initiated the Hezbollah-Israeli war during the summer of 2006.

Hezbollah=Iran. Iran has been sheltering Mugniyah for a long time.

Read Bill’s entire post. The US announced in the past day or so that Iranians working with the insurgents in Iraq are now fair game. This should have been the policy for at least a year, but the Kerbala atrocity may have been the final straw that forced a shift now. The war in Iraq has long been with Iranian agents (among a whole host of others), and it may be about to heat up.

Too bad more US troops had to die before Washington made this long overdue move, though.