Nearly two decades before the latest conflict with Iran, an explosively formed penetrator tore through a U.S. Army vehicle on a Baghdad road, killing Staff Sgt. William Brooks and leaving Sgt. (Ret.) Robert Bartlett with severe injuries.

Iran’s Long-Running Campaign

The attack was part of a broader Iranian campaign that armed and trained proxy forces to target American troops in Iraq, according to federal court findings. Judges found that Iran manufactured or supplied the weapons used in the attacks and that the assailants were trained or directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Bartlett, who was driving an armored Humvee on Route Pluto in Baghdad when the attack occurred, suffered massive facial trauma and was left with severe injuries. He said the weapon was an Iranian-supplied explosively formed penetrator linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ campaign to arm militias attacking American forces in Iraq.

Families Affected

Capt. Shawn English was killed by an explosively formed penetrator in Baghdad on December 3, 2006. Maj. Stuart Wolfer was killed when a rocket struck a gym inside a U.S. base in Baghdad’s International Zone on April 6, 2008. The families of these victims, including Wolfer’s sister Beverly Wolfer Nerenberg and English’s widow Tricia English, continue to feel the pain of their loss.

The legal cases involving these families were brought under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows certain American victims to sue designated state sponsors of terrorism. The resulting judgments found that Iran, acting through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, supplied Shiite militia groups with funding, training, weapons, and technical assistance used to target Americans.

Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.