Iran training Taliban fighters to use surface-to-air missiles

“We know the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] has been training Taliban fighters in the use of surface-to-air missiles,” said a military official in Afghanistan with knowledge of the situation. “As of the moment it is uncertain whether the Taliban has access to the weapons systems necessary to utilize this training against the coalition.”

That is the key question — whether the Iranian government or other supporters of the Taliban have so far supplied the weapons necessary to conduct significant attacks against U.S. or coalition aircraft in the region, military sources said. The Iranians reportedly possess Chinese portable surface-to-air missiles of the type that would threaten coalition aircraft.

When asked whether Iran was training Taliban to use surface-to-air missiles, supplying weapons or had used surface-to-air missiles against U.S. aircraft recently shot down in Afghanistan, a Pentagon official said the Defense Department “cannot address questions this specific and of this nature at an unclassified level.”

NATO has had an advantage with the use of helicopters and aircraft since the beginning of the war. Insurgents have been armed mainly with small arms, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket propelled grenades.

Since the Soviet invasion, shoulder-fired missiles have circulated among militants, but they have been of limited use, in part because they have damaged parts or dead batteries and in part because the Taliban fighters lacked the training to use them. An Afghan official based in Kabul said that Iran has been training the Taliban in using the weapons and may be supplying them.

The official said that an Afghan intelligence report revealed that Iran was supplying batteries for the older model surface-to-air missiles.

Such intelligence is worrisome for U.S. and NATO officials. Surface-to air-missiles supplied covertly by the United States to mujahideen fighters in the 1980s played a crucial role in the defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Coalition forces are even more dependent on moving troops and supplies through the air than the Red Army was, experts said.

In July, WikiLeaks released classified internal U.S. military reports describing Taliban insurgents firing on an American Chinook helicopter with a surface-to-air missile. There are 11 references in these reports to insurgents having Chinese HN-5 surface-to-air missiles. Military officials are not confirming these reports.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely said U.S. Defense officials have known for some time that Iran has been training Taliban in IED and surface-to-air missile training. “And we do nothing about it,” he said.

James Carafano, the senior defense policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, said Iran has been accused in the past of providing support for the Taliban.

He said Iran’s involvement is “ironic since the Taliban and Iran were enemies when the Taliban was in power” but that the Iranian regime has “been particularly aggressive of late.”

For Iran, “It might be a case of the “enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Carafano said. “After all, there was much evidence that some elements of the Iranian regime aided the making and distribution of deadly improvised explosive devices in Iraq.”

The HN-5 or other anti-aircraft missiles would be a vast improvement over the Taliban’s practice of using rocket-propelled grenades in an effort to hit military aircraft. It is nearly impossible to “shoot down a moving aircraft with an RPG,” a senior military official said.

“An RPG is basically a grenade with a rocket motor on the back, where a surface-to-air missile has a heat-seeking device that locks on to the exhaust plume of the aircraft,” the official said.

In June, four service members were killed after their helicopter was brought down by hostile fire, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph T. Breasseale told reporters in Kabul.

Taliban leaders in Helmand province claimed they used “two rockets” to down the helicopter but did not specify the type of system.

Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].