The Obama administration conducted a 30 minute conference call this afternoon with journalists to preview President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan tonight. The final question concerned Iran. The reporter who posed the question informed the senior administration officials briefing the media that Iran had criticized the reported escalation of troops to Afghanistan and compared it to the policies pursued by the Bush administration. A senior administration official explained that such a perception was understandable because both the Bush and Obama administrations are pursuing the national security interests of the U.S. — wisely and uncharacteristically (for this White House) resisting the temptation to take a shot at their predecessors. But then came a troubling claim. “Iran has traditionally played a very important role in the stability of Afghanistan. And we expect that that’s the kind of role we’ll see Iran play in the future.” There is no denying that Iran has played an important role in the stability of Afghanistan — Iran has sought to destabilize it. It has done this in both obvious and less obvious ways, ranging from quiet payments to local and even national Afghan officials to providing the weapons killing American and NATO soldiers there. Indeed, we have recently seen an increase the level of support Iran has provided to the Taliban and insurgent groups — and according to the Obama administration’s top intelligence official, that support includes lethal aid. In October, US soldiers found Iranian-made rockets in Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. CBS News reported that cooperation between the Iranian regime and the Taliban had grown. Lara Logan reported on Iran’s “increasingly deadly involvement” in Afghanistan:
General Stanley McChrystal described Iranian support for the Taliban in his leaked assessment of Afghanistan.
In February, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair answered in writing questions from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. Those answers were declassified in July and included several explosive charges about Iran’s role in Afghanistan. On page 12, he addressed the deadly role Iran is playing in Afghanistan–supporting the Afghan government and the insurgents that seek to bring it down. This support for insurgents–Blair calls it “lethal aid”–means that Iranian weapons are being used against American soldiers and their NATO counterparts.
This is not new. During a trip to Afghanistan in September 2007, then head of U.S. Central Command Admiral William Fallon told the Associated Press: “The Iranians are clearly supplying some amount of lethal aid.” Fallon continued: “There is no doubt … that agents from Iran are involved in aiding the insurgency.” In a series of articles for TWS, Tom Joscelyn has traced this cooperation back to October 2001. (See here for others.) None of this is to suggest that the insurgency in Afghanistan is driven by outside actors. It’s not. Those fighting U.S. and NATO troops there are largely native Afghans. But Iran’s presence is clear and it’s harmful. And yet senior Obama administration officials seem to believe that Iran will play a constructive role in Afghanistan. Eric Cantor, the minority whip in the House of Representatives, had just emerged from a meeting with President Obama on Afghanistan when TWS read him the comment from the senior administration official. Cantor said he was “concerned” that the U.S. is “hoping upon hope” that Iran will change its behavior in Afghanistan. “I have real trouble seeing how our interests and Iran’s interests intersect in Afghanistan.” Is this yet another dangerous triumph of hope over experience?
