======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
On 6/22/14 9:40 AM, Joseph Catron wrote:
It's clear that there's confusion in the ranks, but I suspect Khamenei,
who has the final word anyway, intended his statement as a cue for some
others to shut it.
I don't see why it is so far-fetched to see an Iran-USA bloc against
Sunni fighters. After all, Iran and the USA backed the Northern Alliance
against the Taliban in 2001.
Iran helped overthrow Taliban, candidate says
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY, 6/9/2005
Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards fought alongside and advised the
Afghan rebels who helped U.S. forces topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime
in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the guards' former
leader says.
In an interview by e-mail, Mohsen Rezaie, a candidate in Iran's
presidential elections next week, says the United States has not given
Iran enough credit. He says Iran played an "important role in the
overthrow of the Taliban" in 2001 (Related: Full text of interview).
Even before U.S. forces entered Afghanistan, Iran backed the Northern
Alliance, a loose coalition of warlords and militias from the Tajik,
Uzbek and Hazara minorities. The alliance fought the ruling Taliban, a
regime dominated by majority Pashtuns that imposed a harsh Sunni Islamic
government.
Current and former U.S. troops and officials confirm Iranians were
present with the Northern Alliance as U.S. forces organized the rebels
in 2001. They say U.S. forces had no interaction with the Iranians. They
deny the Iranians made meaningful contributions on the battlefield.
Rezaie is the first to claim that Iran played a key role in capturing
the Afghan capital, Kabul, at the climax of the war.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says he has "no knowledge of (Iranian)
assistance." The CIA refused to comment.
Former CIA Afghan team leader Gary Schroen says there were two Iranian
guard colonels attached to a Northern Alliance commander, Bismullah
Khan, outside Kabul when U.S. Special Forces arrived in September 2001.
Schroen, author of First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA
Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan, says, "There was never any
(U.S.) interaction (with the Iranians), but we saw them." He downplayed
the Iranian role.
"We knew they were on the ground," says John McLaughlin, former deputy
director of the CIA.
Two officers who served with Task Force Dagger, the Special Forces group
that conducted the first U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, say
they knew Iranian agents or troops were present.
One, an Army Special Forces officer, says Iranians in the Northern
Alliance stronghold of Mazar-e-Sharif were sabotaging U.S. efforts by
competing for the loyalty of local warlords. An Army Special Forces
battalion commander says he encountered an Iranian intelligence agent in
Kunduz, scene of one of the war's biggest battles. A third Army officer
says U.S. forces reported the presence of Iranians in the city of Herat
with alliance leader and warlord Ismail Khan. All three spoke on
condition they not be named.
Predominantly Shiite Iran nearly went to war against the Taliban after
the massacre of Afghan Shiites and nine Iranians in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998.
The Bush administration became the prime backer of the Northern Alliance
after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld told CBS' Face the Nation on Nov. 11, 2001, two days before the
fall of Kabul, that there were places in Afghanistan "where there are
some Iranian liaison people, as well as some American liaison people"
working with the same Afghan forces.
James Dobbins, a former State Department official who worked with
diplomats from Iran and other Afghan neighbors to create the first
post-Taliban government, says the Iranians "were equipping and paying
the Northern Alliance. Russia and India were also helping, but at the
time, Iran was the most active."
It is unclear how many Iranians were present at the fall of Kabul.
Rezaie says "some" guard commanders were there. "They were special
forces for urban warfare (with) experience ... during the Iran-Iraq War
(1980-88). They were very effective and active ... but American Army
propaganda quickly claimed most of these achievements in its own name."
The Bush administration would have been loath to praise the Iranians, in
particular the Revolutionary Guards. The guards are Iran's main vehicle
for supporting groups the United States regards as terrorists, such as
Hezbollah in Lebanon, says Kenneth Katzman, an Iran expert at the
Congressional Research Service in Washington.
In 2002, President Bush labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil" along
with Iraq and North Korea.
After the fall of the Taliban, Iran offered to help train and equip a
new Afghan army, Dobbins says. The offer was rebuffed by the Bush
administration, which accused Tehran of giving safe passage to fleeing
members of al-Qaeda, backing Palestinian militants and trying to develop
nuclear weapons.
Rezaie, 50, one of eight candidates permitted to run by Iran's clerical
regime, appeared to be underlining Iran's role to draw attention to his
candidacy and show a desire to improve relations with the United States.
Other candidates in the election, including the front-runner, former
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, promise they would improve ties
broken 25 years ago while Iran was holding U.S. diplomats hostage.
Rezaie says that "everything is possible" to restore relations. He
praised the late Ronald Reagan and former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright for reaching out to Iran and says, "If they (the Americans)
make us a rational offer," he will push for closer cooperation.
Contributing: Sean D. Naylor of Army Times, an independent publication
owned by Gannett
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: [email protected]
Set your options at:
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
