U.S. Animosity Towards Iran Thwarts Policy in Afghanistan

By Barnett R. Rubin and Sara Batmanglich, MIT Center for International Studies. Posted October 25, 2008.

Afghanistan is one of several contexts in which the long-term common interests of the U.S. and Iran have been overshadowed by the animus originating in the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran and the Iranian revolution of 1979, to the detriment of the interests of the U.S., Iran, and Afghanistan. This confrontation has served the interests of the Pakistan military, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Re-establishing the basis for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan would provide significant additional leverage over Pakistan, on whose territory the leadership of both the Taliban and al-Qaida are now found.

During the first half of the Cold War (until the 1978 coup in Afghanistan and the 1979 revolution in Iran), Afghanistan was a non-aligned country with a Soviet-trained army wedged between the USSR and U.S. allies. In the 1970s, under the Nixon Doctrine, the U.S. supported efforts by the Shah of Iran to use his post-1973 oil wealth to support efforts by Afghan President Muhammad Daoud to lessen Kabul's dependence on the USSR. This ended with the successive overthrow of both Daoud and the Shah in 1978 and 1979. A U.S. close partnership with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan emerged as the primary means of maintaining U.S. influence in the Persian Gulf and its eastern flank. Support for Sunni Islamists in Afghanistan and an Islamist-oriented military regime in Pakistan formed parts of this strategy to repulse the USSR from its occupation of Afghanistan, begun in late 1979, and to isolate Iran.

The U.S. led support for the mujahidin based in Pakistan and a greatly enlarged Pakistani security establishment, with co-funding from Saudi Arabia and implementation largely in the hands of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI also nurtured the Sunni right wing in Pakistan to counter-balance the Pakistan People's Party and ethnic sub-nationalists. Revolutionary Iran, distracted by its war with Iraq, provided aid to Afghan Shi'a groups that supported the revolutionary line of Khomeini, but did not engage fully.

Post Soviet: Oil and Taliban

The dissolution of the USSR and independence of the Central Asian and Caucasus states in 1991-92 led to the disengagement of the U.S. from the region, reducing external support to the Pakistan-Saudi alliance and providing Iran with more opportunities for maneuver in Afghanistan. Iran broadened its contacts in Afghanistan from Shi'a groups to non-Pashtun groups more generally (including Sunnis and former government militias), helping to broker the formation of the so-called "Northern Alliance" during the 1992 collapse of the Najibullah government.

The opening of Central Asia and the Caspian region to the international oil and gas market created a new strategic stake. Russia aimed to maintain its monopoly on export of these resources through the former Soviet pipeline network. The U.S. sought to promote the autonomy of the Newly Independent States (as they were called) by supporting alternative pipeline routes and hydrocarbon development schemes. But the shortest and most secure routes from the former USSR's energy resources to the sea lay through Iran, which the U.S. had kept under sanctions since the Tehran embassy takeover.

Iran proposed to become the transport hub for both oil and gas, linking the Central Asian-Caspian region to the Persian Gulf. The main focus of U.S. hydrocarbon strategy was the route north and west of Iran, which ultimately led to the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. Afghanistan played a role in the secondary theater of the southern and eastern outlet, as the U.S. mildly supported Pakistan's attempts to use the Taliban to provide a secure transport corridor from Pakistan to Turkmenistan via western Afghanistan. Iran saw this as part of the U.S. strategy of encircling and containing Iran.

When Lakhdar Brahimi became the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan in 1997, he found that the Government of Iran believed that the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia were jointly supporting the Taliban in continuation of their previous policies. Iran consequently saw the Taliban as the spear-point of its strategic opponent and joined with Russia, India, and the Central Asian states in an effort to support and supply the Northern Alliance. Iran moved beyond its ideological support for Shi'a parties to a strategic policy of supporting all anti-Taliban forces. It settled its differences over Tajikistan with Russia, and the two states brokered the 1997 peace agreement in order to assure a consolidated rear for the Northern Alliance.

Events in August 1998 turned both the U.S. and Iran further against the Taliban. With Pakistan's assistance, the Taliban captured control of most of northern Afghanistan; Pakistani extremists under Taliban command massacred nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i Sharif, leading Iran to mobilize troops on the border. Diplomacy by Brahimi averted open warfare. The same week, al-Qaida, then operating out of the Taliban's Kandahar headquarters, attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Consequently the U.S. began intelligence cooperation with the Northern Alliance. The State Department conducted a dialogue with Iran within the framework of the UN-convened "Six plus Two" group, which included Afghanistan's neighbors, the U.S., and Russia. Pakistan became increasingly isolated in the group. The U.S. and Russia jointly approved Security Council sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaida, with the support of Iran and against the wishes of Pakistan, which flouted the sanctions.

See more stories tagged with: afghanistan, pakistan, al-qaida, taliban, u.s. foriegn policy

Barnett R. Rubin is Director of Studies at the Center for International Cooperation (CIC), New York University. He has written widely on Afghanistan and the region, was an advisor to Ambassador Brahimi during the Bonn conference, and consulted on the writing of Afghanistan's constitution. Sara Batmanglich is a program officer at CIC.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from World! Sign up now »