Iran’s support to the Taliban – Ahmedinejad in Afghanistan

March 10, 2010, 12:05 pm

Iran’s selected president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is currently in Afghanistan to meet with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. During a

press conference yesterday Ahmedinejad claimed that the United States has created the terrorists in Afghanistan.

It has been evident for years now that Iran supports different armed groups in Afghanistan. Iran even supports its former archenemy, the Taliban’s. From the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 1996 to the US invasion, the Taliban confronted Iran. The Taliban undermined both the Iranian regime’s claim to moral leadership of Muslims in the region and they also threatened Iran’s security by conducting cross-border attacks from time to time. 

But this has not stopped the Iranians from supplying the Taliban with both weapons and money: 

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has also opened a corridor for drug smuggling inside Iran for the Taliban to use to export Afghanistan’s vast amount of opium to countries outside of the region.

As in the case of Iraq, Iran has a large influence in Afghanistan and one of the major threats to the stabilization of Afghanistan comes from Iran and its proxy war against the United States.