FOR a few days last month the death of Captain Brian Freeman, a 31-year-old US Army reservist in Iraq, seemed likely to be remembered mainly for the chilling circumstances of the attack that killed him.

Freeman died on January 20 when a group of insurgents dressed in US military uniforms tricked their way into a heavily guarded security compound in the city of Karbala, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad.

The attackers opened fire, killing one American soldier and capturing four others. They then fled with their hostages, who were found dead or dying from bullet wounds 25 miles away.

The raid by an enemy in disguise sent shockwaves through US forces in Iraq, but there was another surprise in store when word reached Washington that Freeman was among the dead.

There were outbursts of anger from Democratic senators who had met Freeman while visiting Baghdad and been struck by his views on the war. They saw the Karbala attack as another fatal example of a military mission gone wrong.

It was not just the calamitous breach of security that had somehow allowed insurgents to pass themselves off as Americans — complete, according to local reports, with American vehicles, American identity cards and even the correct communications codes.

The main concern was that the war was being managed badly and that American soldiers were being sacrificed needlessly, complained Senator Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who knew Freeman and had been impressed by his criticisms of the conduct of the mission.

“We must do everything possible to ensure that the tragedy of Brian Freeman doesn’t continue to be replicated,” said Dodd.

Last week the raid that killed Freeman acquired an even broader significance when it became the focus of American concern about the activities of Iranian military and security officers in Iraq.

The Karbala killings emerged as a potential turning point for US relations with Iran amid speculation in intelligence circles that they had been carried out by pro-Iranian elements of the Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric with close ties to Tehran.

“Iran has supplied some commando squads with serious weapons and training,” a senior Iraqi intelligence officer said.

The claims coincided with warnings by Nicholas Burns, the US undersecretary of state, that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were helping Shi’ite groups. The Iranians were transferring “sophisticated explosive technology” to Iraq, where it was being used against American soldiers, he said.

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