The Washington Post ran a piece yesterday that described an increase in Iranian assistance to the Taliban.
Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq’s Shiite extremists and Afghanistan’s Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials…. In Afghanistan, British forces have intercepted at least two arms shipments from Iran to Afghanistan’s Helmand province since late April, the officials said. Such shipments reflect an unlikely liaison between two historic rivals, the Shiite theocrats in Iran and the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan, they said. Both shipments were carried out after Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly put Iran on notice in mid-April that the United States was aware it was sending arms to the Taliban. The intercepted shipments to Afghanistan included 107mm mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, C-4 explosives and small arms, identical to shipments to Iraqi militias around Basra in March, according to the U.S. and European sources, who track arms movements. The C-4 explosives in both shipments have fake U.S. markings, a common deceptive tactic, the sources added. “We’re concerned about what appears to be an escalating flow of Iranian arms shipments to extremists operating in Iraq and about Iran’s stepped-up efforts to supply weapons to Taliban militants in Afghanistan,” said a senior U.S. official who monitors Iranian activity in the region. The new arms supplies reflect an increasing boldness by Iran, according to U.S. officials and officials from NATO countries. The secretive Quds Force, the branch of the elite Revolutionary Guard in charge of Iran’s special operations abroad, is said by the U.S. officials to be behind the arms flow to militants in both countries.
Somehow, though, the article never mentions al Qaeda. If the Iranians are willing to supply weapons to the Taliban, which was, and remains, al Qaeda’s closest ally, why assume that Iran’s support for Sunni militants doesn’t extend to Iraq as well? The article goes on to say that,
Iran’s goal is to prevent the return of stability in Iraq because it would be associated with an American victory, a senior administration official said. Iran is after “managed chaos” that benefits its long-term interests, according to a recent report by the independent British American Security Information Council. “Iran’s interest lies in supporting and training allies to influence their political positioning in a post-war, post-occupation Iraq.”
This sounds a lot like the editorial in this week’s issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:
An assumption of the Iraq Study Group was that the clerical regime wants stability next door in Iraq. Hence it might be willing to work with Americans. Yet Iran has benefited enormously from Iraqi instability. Traditional, moderate clerics like Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have been willing to work with Americans, have been battered and bruised by the violence. The radical Moktada al-Sadr, a little-known and little-admired scion of a famous clerical family, skyrocketed to prominence because of the strife and thanks to critical Iranian aid to him. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its more radical military wing, the Badr Organization, has also benefited enormously from the violence. SCIRI is a key Iraqi player that has received substantial assistance from Tehran. What is particularly regrettable about SCIRI is that the bloodletting has made life more difficult for moderates within the organization. And the violence has made it harder for SCIRI to pull away from Iranian patronage. Does Iran want to stop this process? Iraq’s Arab Sunni community–detested by the Iranians–has been routed from much of Baghdad, badly bloodied, and put to flight by the hundreds of thousands. This is a bad thing in the eyes of Tehran? Where does Iran have the most influence in Iraq? In Basra, where Shiite-versus-Shiite violence is at its worst. This is not a coincidence. Tehran has benefited massively from Iraqi Shiite division and internecine strife. What the United States should expect from Iran is that it will continue to ship its deadly explosives to Iraq and, through violence, feed the radicalization of the Shiite community. Success through Hezbollah in civil-war-torn Lebanon is the model to remember. Until now, it’s been Iran’s only successful foray abroad. “Stability” in Iraq means only one thing to Tehran: an American success.
What does it mean for American foreign policy if there is a consensus that a) Iran has no interest in seeing stability return to Iraq, and b) Iran is actively supporting Sunni militants, aka al Qaeda, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
