Iran in Afghanistan

From Tim Albone at The Sunday Times (h/t Dawn Patrol):

British troops in Helmand province fighting the Taliban face a new danger as sophisticated Iranian weapons and explosives are being smuggled into Afghanistan.

In the dusty frontier town of Islam Qala, near Herat, on the Afghan side of the border with Iran, weapons and explosives such as armour-piercing roadside bombs are being trafficked to the insurgents.

The news that Taliban rebels are being armed with Iranian-supplied weapons poses an added threat to the 5,000 British troops battling insurgents in southern Afghanistan. “I have to tell the truth. It is clear to everyone that Iran is supporting the enemy of Afghanistan, the Taliban,” Colonel Rahmatullah Safi, head of border police for western Afghanistan, told The Sunday Times.

Afghan intelligence sources believe that many deals between the Taliban and the Iranians are conducted through a drug smuggler in southern Afghanistan who acts as a middle man. He is from the minority Baluch tribe; as well as smuggling heroin through Iran to Europe, he is also believed to have bought weapons off the Iranian government and sold them on to the Taliban.

The deadliest weapons known to cross the border are Iranian-made armour-piercing explosives. Colonel Thomas Kelly, an American under the command of Nato, said that the explosives that have been used to deadly effect in Iraq have been found recently in western Afghanistan.

Note that Colonel Safi is an Afghan. If the Afghans are saying Iran is arming the Taliban, when will the West take notice.

Back in June, Secretary of Defense Gates brought up the issue:

Robert Gates said Monday that Iranian weapons are falling into the hands of anti-government Taliban fighters but he stopped short of blaming Tehran. Afghan President Hamid Karzai seemed to dismiss the matter.

At a news conference at the presidential palace, Gates offered possible explanations for the flow of weapons from Iran to this war-scarred country, including smuggling. He mentioned no specific weapons, but NATO officials recently cited the discovery in Kabul of an armor-piercing roadside bomb, the same type U.S. officials have long complained are entering Iraq from Iran.

"There have been indications over the past few months of weapons coming in from Iran," Gates told reporters with Karzai at his side. "We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling.

This report is much more certain. Perhaps the US has been soft peddling the issue a bit in order to faciliate ongoing talks with Iran. Where, I might add, I'd bet good money the matter has come up.
Stratfor recently reported:

A U.S. Embassy spokesman described the talks as "frank and serious," saying they "focused, as agreed, on security problems in Iraq." Generally, "frank and serious" means nasty, though they probably did get down to the heart of the matter. The participants agreed to hold a second meeting, which means this one didn't blow up.

Longtime Stratfor readers will recall that we have been tracing these Iranian-American talks from the back-channel negotiations to the high-level publicly announced talks, and now to this working group on security. A multilateral regional meeting on Iraq's future was held March 10 in Baghdad, followed by a regional meeting May 4 in Egypt. Then there were ambassadorial-level meetings in Baghdad on May 28 and July 24. Now, not quite two weeks later, the three sides have met again.

Iran is the key to the whole region. The United States will never be able to leave behind a stable Iraq and Afghanistan as long as the regime in Iran is allowed run roughshod in the region. Iran's kidnapping of British hostages in March was not an isolated incident. It was a pattern of confront and test. Britain responded weakly, and now weapons are showing up in the hands of Britain's foes in Afghanistan.

Amir Taheri said in a recent column:

The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.

The latest wave of executions is the biggest Iran has suffered in the same time span since 1984, when thousands of opposition prisoners were shot on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini.
...
The campaign of terror also includes targeted "disappearances" designed to neutralize trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime. According to the latest tally, more than 30 people have "disappeared" since the start of the new Iranian year on March 21. To intimidate the population, the authorities also have carried out mass arrests on spurious grounds.

According to Gen. Ismail Muqaddam, commander of the Islamic Police, a total of 430,000 men and women have been arrested on charges related to drug use since April. A further 4,209 men and women, mostly aged between 15 and 30, have been arrested for "hooliganism" in Tehran alone. The largest number of arrests, totaling almost a million men and women according to Mr. Muqaddam, were related to the enforcement of the new Islamic Dress Code, passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) in May 2006.

This is not a regime that can cajoled with diplomatic niceties. It is a brutal regime bent on keeping its power. Iran thinks it is at war with us. When will we respond accordingly?

Update: From Michael Gordon at the New York Times today:

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials.

Jules Crittenden writes:

Strangely, it is necessary to get to the second-to-last graph … Graph 22, to be specific, before one learns that we are engaged in talks with Iran about reducing violence and stabilizing Iraq, even as the Iranian-backed campaign to murder our soldiers is intensifying. Sounds like there’s a lot to talk about. It’s important to adopt the right tone, however. It is important to speak to people in a language they understand.

Also, be sure to read Michael Rubin's Understanding Iranian Strategy in Afghanistan at the AEI.

To be sure, US forces have been more direct in recent months about publicly talking about Iran's involvement in Iraq.