Bob Gates Says Iran Arming Taliban ... He Can't Be Trusted

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 12:13 PM on May 28, 2009.

There's a lot going on in this article about Defense Secretary Robert Gates' assertion that the Taliban have the upper hand in Afghanistan, and his prediction that the American public's support for the conflict will soften if progress doesn't become apparent soon.

This statement certainly jumped out for me:

Mr. Gates also said Iran was harming U.S. interests in Afghanistan by sending weapons to the Taliban and other armed groups. He expressed particular concern that Tehran might step up its shipments of explosively formed penetrators, powerful roadside bombs capable of punching through even the strongest armor.

Afghanistan is known as the "Graveyard of Empires," and with good reason -- everyone's fought (and lost) there, leaving a country awash in weapons. In Pakistan's "tribal areas" bordering on Afghanistan, even very modern, heavy weapons are easily found -- here's a brief but fascinating documentary that reveals just how easy it is to get Soviet, American and even old British hardware for a song.

And, according to an investigation by The New York Times, there's evidence that Gates' DoD is itself supplying the Taliban with arms:

Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior U.S. and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents' corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with U.S. officers and arms dealers.

The presence of this ammunition among the dead in Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near the Afghan border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against U.S. troops.

 Also, the reference to "explosive formed penetrators" raises a huge red flag ...

Recall how we first learned of the allegation of a dastardly Iranian plot to arm America's enemies with these deadly roadside bombs. It was in Iraq, where occupation officials rolled out the supposedly sophisticated IEDs as a "smoking gun" that would prove once and for all that Iran was arming Iraqi militants. The story was amplified by the stenography of Michael Gordon -- Judith Miller's old writing partner -- in the New York Times, and soon became part of the conventional thinking about the conflict.

The revelation had been delayed because, as the National Journal reported, "even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed" -- intelligence officials had pushed back. When unnamed officials finally briefed reporters in Baghdad's sprawling Green Zone, they argued that the devices were too sophisticated to be home-made by Iraqi insurgents -- they had to be imported. But just a couple weeks after the claim was made, Reuters reported that during a sweep of the city of Diwaniya, "troops, facing scattered resistance, discovered a factory that produced 'explosively formed penetrators' (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of explosive that can destroy a main battle tank and several weapons caches." Oh well.

But they had hard evidence -- actual EFPs captured in battle -- which they eventually revealed to reporters. Which turned out to be a mistake, as question after question popped up about the veracity of the evidence. (Also see Gareth Porter's excellent piece, "US's Smoking Gun on Iran Misfires.")

And even if the weapons were of Iranian manufacture, that's as far as the trail (I should say "trails," as this storyline about Iran arming various groups has been repeated quite often) has gone. One can imagine a thousand indirect routes a weapon could take from Iran to an insurgent in Iraq or Afghanistan. The world is awash in weapons, and if their origin were de facto evidence that  the country that manufactured them was fueling the conflicts in which they appeared ... well, you get the idea.

Now, back to Gates. I'm quite happy to admit that when Goerge W. Bush first made the appointment, I overreached in comparing him to Donald Rumsfeld -- he's no Rumsfeldian ideologue, that's for sure. But the points I raised about his background at the time are still relevant in judging the quality of this latest charge:

Gates, like Rumsfeld, was a dedicated Cold Warrior. [Thomas]Powers recalls that during his 1987 confirmation hearing, Gates was accused by former CIA colleague Mel Goodman (who Gates called "one of my oldest friends in the agency") and Harold Ford ("another old friend and colleague") of pressuring "CIA analysts to exaggerate Soviet involvement in the plot to kill Pope John Paul II and in international terrorism and … suppress[ing] and ignor[ing] 'signs of the Soviet strategic retreat, including the collapse of the Soviet empire.'"

In announcing his decision to vote against Gates' confirmation in 1991, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said that "the record also shows" Gates "was integrally involved with the secret sharing of intelligence to Iraq and our sharp tilt toward Iraq in its war with Iran. But Mr. Gates hid that action from Congress ... It is important to keep in mind that this shift toward Iraq in its war with Iran began our ill-fated cozy relationship with Saddam Hussein."

[Gates] quashed dissenting views and helped craft an inaccurate 1985 intelligence estimate that Soviet influence in Iran could soon grow ... He personally insisted that State Department officials drop footnotes from the report which did not support his viewpoint. These actions had consequences far beyond mere intellectual debates. In recommending that United States allies be permitted to sell arms to Iran, the report helped lay the foundation for the ill-fated arms for hostages deal in Iran.

Iran-Contra, which followed the arms for hostages deal with Iran, is the source of Gates' worst baggage. In the 1980s, as the illegal arrangement was being put together, Gates was then-CIA Director William Casey's chief of staff. The independent counsel investigation of Iran-Contra found insufficient evidence to charge him with a crime, but that was in large part due to the refusal by Clair George, the CIA's former deputy director for operations, to cooperate with the investigation (George was indicted for his role in 1991).

Gates has denied knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair. But as Thomas Powers noted, "The problem, of course, is that Gates, working for Casey, North's enthusiastic backer, was in a very good position to know about [Iran-Contra] and a great deal else besides."

Obviously, I don't have access to any classified information, but I write this so readers can keep it in mind when judging these kind of charges -- so it doesn't disappear down the memory-hole.

Geopolitics is geopolitics, and one can't rule out the possibility that Iran is helping anyone who wants to keep us bogged down in  unwinnable conflicts on far-flung shores. But I'd just point out that the Iranian government was always a deadly opponent of the Taliban. As the Statesman put it, "Iran has been an uncompromising foe of the Taliban from the start. State interests no less than ideological considerations have divided them. Indeed, at a time several years ago when much of the rest of the world was beginning to come around to establishing some sort of modus vivendi with the Taliban as they spread across Afghanistan and seemed impossible to remove, Iran remained staunchly opposed. It gave its backing to the Northern Alliance that resisted the Taliban to the end under the leadership of Ahmed Shah Massoud." A little-known fact of the Afghan invasion is that Iranians were actually on the front-lines of the conflict, battling the Taliban alongside the "Northern Alliance."

Are they now arming their erstwhile enemies? Who knows. But by and large I just don't trust those making the claim.

PS: I'll leave you with an interesting tidbit from the story, sans commentary:

At the suggestion of some of his staff, Mr. Gates has begun referring to himself as the "secretary of war," saying that shows he and his department have no higher priority than the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tagged as: iran, propaganda, gates, taliban

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.