Iran is arming the Taliban

[dustdevil28]

PARIS - A senior U.S. diplomat accused Iran on Tuesday of transferring weapons to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan — the most direct comments yet on the issue by a ranking American official.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking to reporters in Paris, said Iran was funding insurrections across the Middle East — and "Iran is now even transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

"It's a country that's trying to flex its muscles, but in a way that's injurious to the interests of just about everybody else in the world," he said. "I think it's a major miscalculation."

In Afghanistan last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Iranian weapons were falling into the hands of Taliban fighters, but stopped short of blaming the government itself.

Iran's possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq has long been hotly debated, and last month some Western and Persian Gulf governments charged that the Islamic government in Tehran is also secretly bolstering Taliban fighters.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill said Taliban fighters are showing signs of better training, using combat techniques comparable to "an advanced Western military" in ambushes of U.S. Special Forces soldiers.

"In Afghanistan it is clear that the Taliban is receiving support, including arms from ... elements of the Iranian regime," British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the May 31 edition of the Economist.

Iran, which is also in a dispute with the West over its nuclear program, denies the Taliban accusation, calling it part of a broad anti-Iranian campaign. Tehran says it makes no sense that a Shiite-led government like itself would help the fundamentalist Sunni movement of the Taliban.

Burns also criticized Iran's perceived intransigence over its nuclear program, which many Western powers fear masks a plan to build weapons — though Iran says its intentions are to generate energy.

Burns insisted new U.N. Security Council measures were needed "so that the Iranians don't have business as usual."

"We will have to move forward at the Security Council for a third ... resolution in a matter of weeks," he said.

The council imposed sanctions on Iran on Dec. 23 for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment despite U.N. demands, and modestly increased the sanctions March 24 when Tehran stepped up its enrichment program.

"We believe that beyond (the third resolution), Europe and the Asian countries and Middle Eastern countries will have to adopt even harsher sanction measures outside the Security Council," Burns added.

Many have sought new sanctions after the International Atomic Energy Agency's recent report that Iran's enrichment program was expanding — and its warning for the first time that its knowledge of Tehran's nuclear activities was shrinking.

The prospect of council action appeared more likely after a senior Iranian envoy abruptly canceled talks Monday with the head of the IAEA.

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So Iran is now arming insurgents in Iraq, giving arms to the Taliban, and re-arming Hizballah in Lebanon. Taking this with their complete defiance with their nuclear program and I have to ask at what point does the world start thinking about military action against this assholes?


news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070612/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_taliban

[dustdevil28]

Wow, no opinion on this eh? Well here's another article from CNN.

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PARIS, France (CNN) -- The United States has "irrefutable evidence" that Tehran is transferring arms to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, a top U.S. diplomat told CNN Wednesday, noting that NATO forces have intercepted some of the arms shipments.

"There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it's a pattern of activity," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN.

"If you see the Iranians arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank and, of course, arming Shia militants inside Iraq itself. It's very violent and very unproductive activity by the Iranian government."

And one that puts Tehran contrary to the U.N. Security Council, Burns said.

"Iran is operating against the last Security Council Resolution 1747, passed on March 24, which said that Iran must not transfer arms outside of Iran, and here it is doing it in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, so Iran is in outright violation of its Security Council commitments," according to Burns.

In late May, U.S. and British officials simply said that weapons crossing the border from Iran to Afghanistan may be winding up in the hands of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic militia that is battling U.S.- and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

Wednesday's accusations took the case against Tehran to the next level.

"It's certainly coming from the government of Iran. It's coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government," Burns said.

Previously, coalition officials in Afghanistan said some Iranian-made AK-47s, C-4 plastic explosives and mortars had been intercepted, and a NATO official said they had found one explosively-formed penetrator bomb (EFP) that can pierce American armor.

The EFP is similar to the weaponry the United States says that Iran has provided to militants in Iraq, but the NATO official said that the weapon has not been traced directly to the Iranian regime.

Some analysts question whether the top echelons of the Iranian government are behind any transfer of arms from the Islamic Republic to the Taliban, Iran's long-time foe, suggesting that rogue elements -- perhaps the Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard -- may be operating on their own.

But a U.S. official who requested anonymity told CNN last month that the United States believes that Iran's supreme leaders certainly know about these operations and could stop them if they wanted to.

Both U.S. officials and outside analysts said that any malicious intentions on Iran's part would only be directed at the United States. The majority-Shiite Iran would not, they said, want the Taliban to gain too much strength. The Taliban are virulently anti-Shiite.

One analyst called it a game of "managed chaos," just enough to bloody America's nose in Afghanistan.

www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/13/iran.taliban/index.html