Iran skeptical of US's Afghan strategy
By Mitra Farnik
WASHINGTON - Iran has taken a skeptical view of President Barack Obama's new
Afghan strategy, but doesn't have one of its own.
Though Tehran shares Washington's desire for the Taliban to be neutralized, it
is wary of an increased American military presence in Afghanistan, even if this
is aimed at achieving such a goal.
Since the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, the US and Iran have
engaged in a complicated competition for influence that
has been swayed by events on the ground in Afghanistan but also ideological
battles inside both Iran and America.
This competition has been tempered by the reality of shared interests and
objectives between Washington and Tehran that include the establishment of
security and the removal of al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan,
reconstruction of the country, and the fight against narcotics.
These shared interests created an optimistic atmosphere with the election of
Obama to the US presidency, the priority he gave to the security of
Afghanistan, and the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special representative
for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Iran's participation and Holbrooke's encounter with Iran's Deputy foreign
Minister Mehdi Akhundzadeh at a conference on Afghanistan on April 1, 2009, was
seen as a promising sign regarding future cooperation between Iran and other
world powers on how to deal with the deepening problems in Afghanistan.
However, events in both Afghanistan and Iran, including contested elections, as
well the decision by the Obama administration to send more American troops to
Afghanistan, in all likelihood have further delayed the prospects of
Tehran-Washington cooperation in that country despite shared interests.
Last June's election in Iran and the political crisis that has engulfed the
country since, as well as the belief among many Iranian leaders that the US is
fanning the domestic crisis in Iran, and the impasse over Iran's nuclear plans,
have heightened the distrust between the two governments.
This has made immediate interaction between the two quite difficult even if
Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki decides to accept an invitation to
join the forthcoming conference on Afghanistan co-convened by British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and United Nations
secretary general Ban Ki-moon to be held in London on January 28.
Meanwhile, Tehran has continued to pursue its own independent Afghan policy.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was quick to congratulate Karzai on his "victory"
in the first round of the presidential election when no other leader did. In
some ways the clear electoral fraud in Afghanistan was a blessing in disguise
for Tehran, since it made the allegations of fraud in Iran's election seem
routine.
In addition, although there have been no visible strategic changes in Tehran's
Afghan policy since Ahmadinejad's election, recent reports of Iran's support
for the Taliban - described by the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl
Eikenberry, as "low level" and "periodic" - suggest Tehran is watching the
Obama administration's moves in Afghanistan closely, mindful of the possibility
that there might be an attempt at compromise with the more moderate elements of
the Taliban.
Tehran remains highly skeptical of the strategy pursued by the Obama
administration, which it sees as a continuation of a pattern of vacillating
including the US's insistence on local autonomy for Afghanistan in 2001, its
push for a strong central government in 2003, and its return to favoring
decentralization in 2006. From Tehran's point of view, the same indecision of
the US first tolerated the opium crop, then proposed eradication through aerial
spraying, and now underwrites living with opium production for decades.
On a more general level, Iran continues to see Afghanistan's diffuse rural
insurgency - spread among a population of 30 million people, 80% of whom are
scattered among 20,000 remote, often mountainous villages - as being fueled
rather than contained by the presence of American troops.
This skepticism was again recently expressed in an interview with former
president and current chair of the Expediency Discernment Council, Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, who told a French television station on December 27 that
not only have American policies not reached their objectives, they have
backfired.
"We do not consider these policies successful," he said, pointing out that the
Taliban and al-Qaeda were much stronger, the volume of narcotics has increased
"eight-fold", and a "contagion" of insecurity afflicts Pakistan.
Responding in Egypt on December 10 to a question regarding Iran's anti-American
activities in Afghanistan, the parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, said, "The US
is following a policy that the Soviet Union implemented 30 years ago. It
entered with 100,000 forces and left with 15,000 dead. Its non-workability is
intrinsic and has nothing to do with external agents."
In short, Tehran's overall posture remains one of wanting to reduce the
American military presence in its neighborhood.
Along with skepticism, however, there are signs that Tehran is concerned about
Obama's strategy. As described, the strategy intends to use intelligence and
special forces to deny al-Qaeda a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum by
retaining a sufficiently robust presence to prevent it from mounting a
conventional threat to a city like Kabul, strengthen the capacity of
Afghanistan's security forces and government, and increase economic assistance
particularly in north and central Afghanistan. It would also combine the US
military presence with political action and incentives to keep tribal leaders
and other regional power brokers on the US side and away from the Taliban.
Iran is concerned because if all these techniques are successful and the
likelihood of civil war decreases - something Tehran wants as well - the
possibility of a political settlement with the Taliban increases. Tehran has
been the most prominent opponent of compromise with the Taliban, which it sees
as an arch foe with which Iran almost went to war. But should the US or Karzai
reach a compromise with the so-called moderate faction of the Taliban, Tehran
does not want to be surprised or be left out of the equation.
Inside Iran, however, there are concerns that the diplomatic apparatus may not
be active enough or buttressed by strategic thinking. There have been a number
of bilateral agreements between the Iranian and Afghan governments, the latest
of which - legislation on cooperation in fighting narcotics, organized crime,
and terrorism - was passed in the Majlis (parliament) on December 29.
But a report by the Majlis research center questions the adequacy of such
agreements, pointing out, for instance, that the buttressing of border controls
has been mostly a one-way affair with the Afghan government doing almost
nothing in the past despite several other previous agreements.
The report said that the main external players in Afghanistan are the US and
Iran and chastised the government of Iran for the lack of an overall strategy
and for not doing enough to establish security in Afghanistan. It argued that
Washington wants Iran's help in solving its problems in Afghanistan in areas
unrelated to security but seeks to contain Iran's presence in security-related
areas.
It argued for a strategic approach that involves Iran more directly in the
establishment of security - including the training of Afghan police - in
Afghanistan with implications for both regional and border security. It also
called for the pursuit of agreements that prevent future deployment of foreign
troops on the border of the two countries.
But greater Iranian involvement in Afghanistan's security architecture is
simply not possible without some sort of understanding with the US, and
achieving such an understanding has now become much more difficult because of
the nuclear impasse as well as events inside Iran.
The dilemma faced by Iran regarding its Afghan policy is best reflected in the
differing positions taken by influential member of the Majlis national security
and foreign policy committee. According to one member, Heshmatollah
Falahat-Pisheh, "Iran should not help the United States and United Kingdom when
they are depriving Iran of its rights. Iran can help these countries in
Afghanistan but helping is a mistake."
Javad Jahangirzadeh, on the other hand, argues, "These countries [the US and
Britain] want to use the lever of the Islamic republic [of Afghanistan] to
solve their own problems but in cooperating with them we can also pursue our
national interest simultaneously."
This debate over Afghanistan is likely to remain unresolved so long as Iran's
domestic crisis continues and Iran's foreign policy remains ambivalent about
how to engage with the region's most important player - the US - in
Afghanistan.
In short, although cooperation over Afghanistan was deemed by some just a year
ago as an entry point for improved relations between the two countries, it has
now become dependent on the settlement of the crisis inside Iran and the
overall lowering of tensions between the US and Iran.
Mitra Farnik is the pseudonym of an Iranian writer and political analyst
based in Washington DC.
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