Iran Helping The Taliban

Julian Borger is surprised that Iran is building alliances with Talibans and Hamas. Why? What universe these so-called experts live in? Don't these people study how Islam become to establish itself as an empire?


When Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed this week to hit back at American interests around the world if Iran was attacked, it was no empty threat.
More than at any time in the life of the Islamic republic, Iran is positioned to inflict significant pain on the US and its allies in many places at the same time.
US stumbling in the Middle East has strengthened and emboldened Iran. On top of an array of patron-client relationships with powerful Shia groups, like Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Badr brigades and the Mahdi army in Iraq, Tehran has built a new layer of alliances with some more surprising partners among the Sunni jihadists. It has forged a relationship with Hamas in Gaza, and even appears to have developed links with the Taliban.


In the wake of anecdotal accounts of would-be Iranian jihadists turning up in Afghanistan, western intelligence sources believe official contacts have been made between the erstwhile enemies. Iranian intelligence is thought to be providing some money and training to the Taliban and giving safe passage for jihadists travelling from the Iraqi to the Afghan front.

Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation thinktank, who has just returned from Afghanistan, said: "There are indications the Iranians have opened contacts with insurgent groups, including the Quetta Shura (the Taliban command council for southern Afghanistan)".
He said there was so far no evidence Iran had supplied what the Taliban need most, modern surface-to-air missiles. He also stressed that Iranian backing for the Taliban was barely significant compared to the support it enjoyed in Pakistan, while Tehran enjoyed strong relations with the Karzai government in Kabul. "What Iran in my view is doing is pursuing a hedging strategy," he said. "The Iranian government would prefer to keep a close relationship with the Afghan government, but also wants to protect itself from a strike from the US or Israel." Iran could make life more difficult for the US, Britain and their allies in southern Afghanistan. "If the Taliban got surface-to-air missiles, it would really change things in Afghanistan."