Afghanistan and Iran

The New York Times Review of Books has an important article that deals with both. Pakistan is not mentioned once, which is very curious, except for the reality that there are forces beyond Pakistan that impact Afghanistan, especially since the Iranians have a vested interest in Afghanistan’s stability. The article is a reminder of the squandered possibilities of President George. W. Bush. Flashback to 2006:

…Iran has distributed its largess, more than $200 million in all, mostly here in the west but also in the capital, Kabul. It has set up border posts against the heroin trade, and next year will begin work on new road and construction projects and a rail line linking the countries. In Kabul, its projects include a new medical center and a water testing laboratory.

Iran’s ambassador, Muhammad Reza Bahrami, portrayed his government’s activities as neighborly good works, with a certain self-interest. Iran, he said, is eager to avoid repeating the calamities of the last 20 years, when two million Afghan refugees streamed over the border.

“Our strategy in Afghanistan is based on security, stability and developing a strong central government,” he said. “It not only benefits the Afghan people, it’s in our national interest.” [...]

Though, obviously, Iran is not totally benevolent in these goals.

However, the article in the NYT Review of Books outlines the complexities and relationships that require President-elect Obama’s attention the minute he takes office. You cannot deal as Bush-Cheney did on a crisis by crisis basis. Our foreign policy must turn to integration and cooperation between countries and the U.S. if anything is to be accomplished.

But Iran also has critical interests in Afghanistan, its neighbor to the east, where it has long opposed the Taliban and is concerned to avoid the chaos that would result from the fall of the increasingly threatened Karzai government. The Iranian government places a high priority on defeating al-Qaeda and the Taliban—extremist Sunni groups which it views as direct threats to Iran’s Shiites—as well as on reducing Afghanistan’s rampant drug trade.

Of course the United States has other important concerns about Iran, including Iranian support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and the threat it poses to Israel—particularly in view of the recent conflict in Gaza. But the paramount issues of Iran’s nuclear enrichment and its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, we argue, are closely interrelated, and the way they are dealt with could determine the US’s ability to address other problems in the US–Iranian relationship.

Under President Bush, Iran’s nuclear program and its role in Iraq and Afghanistan were treated as wholly separate issues. The US government largely refused to talk to Iran on the nuclear issue and instead relied on sanctions and hectoring. By contrast, on the issue of Iraq, it agreed to ambassadorial talks, although these were largely limited to discussions of Iraq’s internal security issues, including Iranian provision of weapons to insurgents. On Afghanistan, aside from occasional allegations about collaboration with the Taliban—this despite Iran’s well-known opposition to the group—the Bush administration studiously ignored Iran. As a consequence, little progress was made on any front.

If President Obama is to dissuade Iran from building a nuclear bomb, as well as develop a successful regional strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, he will have to develop an integrated approach toward Iran that addresses all three issues. read more