U.S. Iran Strategy Announced by SecState Pompeo

Posted on May 21, 2018May 21, 2018 by Denise Simon

This speech/policy sets the table for the North Korea talks with President Trump. Further, it advances the mission on countering militant Islam not only in the region but globally. Europe has to decide on corporate business relationship with Iran versus human rights along with worldwide terrorism at the hands of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Since 2014, a broad range of organizations, from medical companies such as GE Healthcare to aerospace firms such as Lufthansa Technik, as well as educational institutions such as Harvard University, have obtained permission and waivers to operate in Iran.

Other U.S. institutions that were permitted to do business in Iran include: General Electric Medical and Aviation Divisions, Bausch & Lomb, Boston Scientific, Smithsonian Institute, HSBC, Philips North America, University of California San Diego, University of Wisconsin, Loyola University, New York University, BNP Paribas S.A., American Pulp and Paper and Intelsat Corporation to list a few. More here.

(Reuters) – The United States on Monday demanded Iran make sweeping changes — from dropping its nuclear program to pulling out of the Syrian civil war — or face severe economic sanctions as the Trump administration hardened its approach to Tehran.

Iran dismissed Washington’s ultimatum and one senior Iranian official said it showed the United States is seeking “regime change” in Iran.

Weeks after President Donald Trump pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran, his administration threatened to impose “the strongest sanctions in history,” and vowed to “crush” Iranian operatives abroad, setting Washington and Tehran further on a course of confrontation.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded sweeping changes that would force Iran effectively to reverse the recent spread of its military and political influence through the Middle East to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

If Washington sees tangible shifts in Iran’s policies, it is prepared to lift sanctions, Pompeo said.

“The sting of sanctions will only grow more painful if the regime does not change course from the unacceptable and unproductive path it has chosen for itself and the people of Iran,” Pompeo said in his first major speech since becoming secretary of state.

“These will be the strongest sanctions in history by the time we are done,” he added.

Pompeo took aim at Iran’s policy of expansion in the Middle East through support for armed groups in countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

He warned that the United States would “crush” Iranian operatives and proxies abroad and told Tehran to pull out forces under its command from the Syrian civil war where they have helped President Bashar al-Assad gain the upper hand.

Iran’s president summarily dismissed Pompeo’s demands.

“Who are you to decide for Iran and the world?,” the semi-official ILNA news agency quoted Hassan Rouhani as saying.

“The world today does not accept America to decide for the world, as countries are independent … that era is over … We will continue our path with the support of our nation.”

Tension between the two countries has grown notably since Trump this month withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement aimed at preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

A senior Iranian official said Pompeo’s remarks showed that the United States was pushing for “regime change,” a charged phrase often associated with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.

Pompeo warned that if Iran fully resumed its nuclear program Washington would be ready to respond and said the administration would hold companies doing prohibited business in Iran to account.

“Our demands on Iran are not unreasonable: give up your program,” Pompeo said, “Should they choose to go back, should they begin to enrich, we are fully prepared to respond to that as well,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Pompeo said Washington would work with the Defense Department and allies to counter Iran in the cyberspace and maritime areas.

The Pentagon said it would take all necessary steps to confront Iranian behavior in the region and was assessing whether that could include new actions or doubling down on current ones.

NAMING NAMES

Pompeo said if Iran made major changes, the United States was prepared to ease sanctions, re-establish full diplomatic and commercial relations and support the country’s re-integration into the international economic system.

Any new U.S. sanctions will raise the cost of trade for Iran and are expected to further deter Western companies from investing there, giving hardliners, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an opportunity to cement their grip on power.

Iran’s ruling elite are mindful of recent protests sparked by economic hardship, which is, in part, their calculation for working with the Europeans on ways to salvage the nuclear deal.

Pompeo’s speech did not explicitly call for regime change but he repeatedly urged the Iranian people not to put up with their leaders, specifically naming Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“At the end of the day the Iranian people will get to make a choice about their leadership,” Pompeo said.

Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the Brooking Institution think tank’s foreign policy program, said Pompeo’s speech did indeed amount to a strategy of regime change.

“There is only one way to read it and that is that Trump administration has wedded itself to a regime-change strategy to Iran, one that is likely to alienate our allies. One with dubious prospects for success,” she said.

The administration’s approach “explicitly puts the onus on the Iranian people to change their leadership or face cataclysmic financial pressure,” said Maloney who has advised the State Department on Iran in the Bush administration between 2005-2007.

Lebanese analyst Ghaleb Kandil, who has close ties to the pro-Iran Hezbollah group, said Washington’s demands have previously not worked.

“These are conditions that were tested in previous phases of American pressures, before the nuclear deal, when Iran was in more difficult circumstances than it is in these days, and it did not surrender to these conditions or accept them,” said Kandil.

Pompeo outlined 12 U.S. demands for Iran including to stop uranium enrichment, never to pursue plutonium reprocessing and to close its heavy water reactor.

It also had to declare all previous military dimensions of its nuclear program and to permanently and verifiably abandon such work, he said.

Pompeo’s demand that Tehran stop uranium enrichment goes even further than the nuclear deal. Iran says its nuclear work has medical uses and will produce energy to meet domestic demand and complement its oil reserves.

Washington’s regional allies, the Gulf and Israel, who were strong critics of the deal, praised the administration’s position on Monday.

European parties to the nuclear deal – France, Britain and Germany – are working to find a way to keep the nuclear pact in effect after Washington’s exit.

Speaking ahead of Pompeo’s speech, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it would be difficult for the United States and its allies to deal with all the issues they had with Iran at the same time.

“If you try to pull all of those into a giant negotiation, a new jumbo Iran negotiation, a new treaty…that seems to be what they envisage and I don’t see that being very easy to achieve in anything like a reasonable timescale, Johnson said in Argentina.

Gordon Chang is Right, Recall Chinese Diplomats

Posted on May 20, 2018May 20, 2018 by Denise Simon

Today, May 20, Steve Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary announced the tariffs are on hold, pending some kind of a tentative agreement. Really Steve? This as the North Korea Kim/Trump talks are on shaky ground. China wants North Korea to have nuclear weapons, period.

China is a Leninist state. I spent a month on the mainland, I saw it.

A threat to the United States? Yes. To allies? Yes

China has overtly weaponized those pesky island with a H-6 bomber aircraft landing on Woody Island. Did President Xi share any of this with President Trump at that confab at Mar A Lago? The matter of the South China Sea and those disputed waters and island is hardly any new threat. It goes back to at least 2014 and President Obama was briefed often on the building Chinese aggression. There was a temporary Asia Pivot by Obama but it was merely a gesture in retrospect. That Asia Pivot hardly raised any eyebrows in Beijing.

The reason to recall diplomats and expel others from the United States? At least the first one, laser attack on our U.S. airmen.

8 May 2018 — The two airmen reported symptoms of dizziness and seeing rings. Pointing lasers at aircraft is extremely dangerous. It can temporarily blind pilots, and in the United States it’s a federal offense. While the pilots are expected to make a full recovery, the incident raises questions about how far the United States will allow China to push it without pushing back.

But first let’s back up. What’s everyone doing in Djibouti, a tiny country in eastern Africa? America has a base in Djibouti because of its proximity to Yemen, a terrorist incubator. The 4,000 U.S. troops stationed there are tasked with conducting counter-terrorism operations in the region.

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What about China? Well, that’s a little more opaque. China opened its Djibouti base last August, claiming that its purpose is to help with anti-piracy patrols and other peacekeeping missions. It’s supposedly a logistics base, but here’s the thing: China doesn’t have foreign military bases anywhere in the world — except in Djibouti, eight miles from the U.S. base.

But is worse…anyone paying attention outside of Gordon Chang and Steven Mosher? Yes thankfully, Congress is. FINALLY

Suggest you watch this video, consider how much of it, if not all of it was stolen from the United States.

So, let us consider some of these items shall we?

Why are we giving China access to our defense contractors? Additionally, there are cyber part operations and hacks of the F-22 and F-35.
Who is challenging the BRI, Belt Road Initiative?
The South China Sea is part of the Blue Water Territory. China is building a navy to be twice the size of that of the United States. That includes up to 12 nuclear powered carrier battle groups.
No one challenged China on the Scarborough Shoal achievement, that is the new China model for hegemony.
China wants all telecom advances developed by the United States for it’s fiber-liked command centers and is getting them. China wants to lead on 5G, then there is outer-space.
China and Russia have an alliance on military, missile and hybrid tactics to alter the balance of global power.
Then there was the China Argentina issue with the Falklands, again.
China has instituted national re-education program. The program is a hallmark of China’s emboldened state security apparatus under the deeply nationalistic, hard-line rule of President Xi Jinping. It is partly rooted in the ancient Chinese belief in transformation through education – taken once before to terrifying extremes during the mass thought reform campaigns of Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader sometimes channeled by Xi.
A significant Chinese operation is debt-trapping. Sri Lanka and the Philippines are already falling due to this.
China forcing Venezuela to give up Blanquilla Island over debt.
If you look at the Qing Dynasty, that is President Xi’s vision and Taiwan is an important key to that achievement. China Wants to Build a Massive Underwater Tunnel to Taiwan and to own/control Taiwan by 2020.
OBOR, One Belt, One Road is a sophisticated trade strategy on a global scale and it threatens currency stability, port security, transportation channels and debt.

Why Did Russian Operatives Poison Sergei Skripal?

Posted on May 18, 2018May 18, 2018 by Denise Simon

Sergei Skripal is officially released from the hospital today.

Friend who picked up Yulia Skripal from airport complains ... photo

Sergei Skripal was a double agent working for both Russian intelligence and the British agency MI6. During the spy swap scandal between the United States in Russia, Britain asked the Obama administration to include Sergei Skripal to be included in the swap as he was in a Russian prison at the time. The request was granted. Skripal continued his work on behalf of MI6 after his release. He is contracting for MI6 advising Eastern European countries, including Estonia on how to deal with Russian aggression due to the annexing and militant operations of Crimea and Ukraine.

Friend says Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin for ... photo

Further, it is written that Skripal had a relationship with a British intelligence officer who wrote the Trump Russian dossier. That British intelligence officer worked for Orbis of Christopher Steele fame, hired by Fusion GPS.

A Russian former construction mogul claimed Skripal was still working with Russia’s intelligence apparatus, although it remains unclear what connection, if any, Skripal had with the security consultant.

“If you have a military intelligence officer working in the Russian diplomatic service, living after retirement in the U.K., working in cybersecurity and every month going to the embassy to meet military intelligence officers—for me, being a political refugee, it is either a certain danger or, frankly speaking, I thought that this contact might not be very good for me because it can bring some questions from British officials,” Valery Morozov told British TV outlet Channel 4.

Steele has found himself under intense scrutiny ever since his 35-page dossier, which details Trump’s links to Russia and accusations of possible collusion to win the White House in 2016, was disclosed. The dossier has yet to be completely verified but has dogged Trump and only intensified accusations of deeper ties to Russia, which the president has not explained.

Steele reportedly wrote another, different memo, which has not reached the public. It details how Russia believed it was able to stop Trump from naming former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney—a noted hawk on Russia—as secretary of state in favor of a more pro-Russia representative. Trump eventually went with former Exxon Mobil chief Rex Tillerson, who has a long-running relationship with Putin. More here.

Russia continues to deny the operation of poison against Sergei Skripal and his daughter and denies it ever had the nerve agent known as Novichok. Well, German intelligence has proof otherwise and collaborated with British intelligence on the investigation.

Some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states obtained access to the Soviet Union’s so-called ‘Novichok’ nerve agents in the 1990s, through an informant recruited by German intelligence, according to reports. NATO countries refer to ‘Novichok-class’ nerve agents to describe a series of weaponized substances that were developed by the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia from the early 1970s to at least 1993. They are believed to be the deadliest nerve agents ever produced, but Moscow denies their very existence. A type of Novichok agent, described by British scientists as A234, is said to have been used in March of this year by the person or persons who tried to kill Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who spied for Britain in the early 2000s and has been living in England ever since he was released from a Russian prison in 2010.

On Thursday, two German newspapers, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, and two regional public radio broadcasters, WDR and NDR, said that the NATO alliance has had access to the chemical composition of Novichok nerve agents since the period immediately following the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Specifically, the reports claimed that the access was gained through a Russian scientist who became an informant for the German Federal Intelligence Service, known as the BND. The scientist struck a deal with the BND: he provided the spy agency with technical information about the Novichok agents in exchange for safe passage to the West for him and his immediate family. Initially, the German government was reluctant to get its hands on material that was —and remains— classified as a weapon of mass destruction by international agencies. But eventually it asked for the chemical composition of the Novichok nerve agents and even acquired samples from the Russian informant.

According to media reports, the BND proceeded to share information about the chemical composition of the Novichok nerve agents with key NATO allies, including Sweden, France, Britain and the United States. The sharing of such a sensitive substance was approved by the then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, said the reports. In the following years, a handful of NATO countries proceeded to produce what media reports described as “limited quantities” of Novichok agents, reportedly in order to experiment with various defense measures against them and to produce antidotes. Russia has denied accusations that it was implicated in Skripal’s poisoning and has argued that other countries, some of them NATO members, have the capacity to produce Novichok agents. Hat-tip.

U.S. Applies New Iran Sanctions, Hardly Enough

Posted on May 15, 2018May 15, 2018 by Denise Simon

We are still at war in the Middle East where Iran with proxies is the real and virtual enemy. The United States uses proxies as well, yet the United States near term and long range strategy remains fleeting.

The talks that continue between Iran and Europe on the JCPOA should include Iran’s war operation in the Middle East.

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Going forward for the United States:

Implications and Future Research

The unwillingness of the United States and its GCC partners to use their vast conventional military superiority has shifted the balance of power in the region from the conventional to the unconventional realm. Iran then relies on its willingness to assume more risk and its ability to better influence proxies than its adversaries, to achieve favorable foreign policy outcomes despite the opposition of the United States and its Arab allies. The use of proxy groups fundamentally decreases the physical cost a state incurs due to conflict. However, when the soldiers of a state die advising and assisting these proxies, it is more difficult to justify domestically, because using proxies signals that the objectives are not important enough to warrant decisive intervention. Therefore, states are most successful when they use proxies not as a cost-reduction mechanism alone but because proxies

are better able to achieve the desired end than conventional military forces. If the United States is unwilling to risk additional battle deaths or domestic political repercussions to prevent Iran from projecting power across the Middle East, then it must instead apply cost-imposing strategies.

Increasing the effectiveness of special operations forces from allied Arab states through intelligence sharing, kinetic strikes, training, and attached American advisors, while encouraging deployments of these elements to areas where Iranian advisors and IRGC units operate, would increase the human cost of Iranian activities. In addition to targeting Iran’s primary efforts in Iraq and Syria, these partnered operations should also confront peripheral Iranian efforts throughout the Gulf, including Yemen, in order to exploit the weakness of Iranian popular support for its presence therein. By working through Arab partners, the United States can apply the indigenous force necessary to confront Iranian proxies, while increasing the likelihood that Arab states achieve a confluence of shared ideology and objectives with their proxies, which eludes the United States

as a separate actor. Saudi and Emirati support to Yemeni military units recapturing the port of Aden and the Bab al-Mandab Strait serve as good examples of the type of effort the United States should expand.

In addition to combating Iranian proxy groups directly, targeting the ground, air, and sea logistical routes that the IRGC Quds Force uses to supply its proxies would affect Iran’s ability to support its efforts in the region. As long as Iran continues to rely on a domestically based force projection model, its network is vulnerable to air strikes, raids, and sabotage. An expanded network of friendly proxies partnered with US and allied

-Arab advisors would be ideally suited to facilitating this type of targeting.

Complete text, context and summary is found here.

The author is: Maj. Alex Deep is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is a Special Forces officer with ten years of service and multiple deployments to Afghanistan in conventional and special operations task forces. He served as a rifle platoon leader and company executive officer in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team prior to completing Special Forces Assessment and Selection and subsequently the Special Forces Qualification Course. He then served as a Special Forces detachment commander and battalion assistant operations officer in 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne). He currently teaches SS307: Introduction to International Relations. Deep holds a Bachelor of Science in American Politics and Arabic from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

$100,000 to Destroy the New US Embassy in Jerusalem

Posted on May 14, 2018May 14, 2018 by Denise Simon

Sheesh…the building has been there for years already. Further, there are several other countries that are moving their embassies as well.

About 800 guests attended the opening ceremony. The U.S. was represented by a formally designated “Presidential Delegation” led by Deputy Secretary of State, John. J. Sullivan, and including U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Presidential Advisor Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, and Jason Greenblatt, the White House’s lead negotiator. A bicameral Congressional delegation and other U.S. dignitaries were also present for the ceremony, which was also attended by top diplomats from 33 other nations.

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The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 is a public law of the United States passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995.

The Act recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and called for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city. Its purpose was to set aside funds for the relocation of the Embassy of the United States in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, by May 31, 1999. For this purpose it withheld 50% of the funds appropriated to the State Department specifically for “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad” as allocated in fiscal year 1999 until the United States Embassy in Jerusalem had officially opened. Israel’s declared capital is Jerusalem, but this is not internationally recognized, pending final status talks in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Despite passage, the law allowed the President to invoke a six-month waiver of the application of the law, and reissue the waiver every six months on “national security” grounds. The waiver was repeatedly invoked by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

Iran continues to ignore history, facts and hard tangible evidence about Jerusalem. Furthermore we were told by John Kerry and Barack Obama were to be good citizens of the world after the completion of the Iranian nuclear deal….well three things at least have surfaced since the United States withdrew.

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A hardline Iranian organization is reportedly offering a $100,000 reward to any person who bombs the newly opened U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, according to a translation of Farsi language reports.
A group known as the Iranian Justice Seeker Student Movement is reported to have disseminated posters calling for an attack on the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, which has been opposed by Palestinian and Iranian officials as an affront to the holy city.

“The Student Justice Movement will support anybody who destroy the illegal American embassy in Jerusalem,” the poster states in Farsi, Arabic, and English, according to an independent translation of the propaganda poster provided to the Free Beacon.

There will be a “$100,000 dollar prize for the person who destroys the illegal American embassy in Jerusalem,” the poster states.

The call for an attack on the new embassy is just the latest escalation by hostile Islamic states and leaders who have lashed out at the United States and President Donald Trump for making good on a campaign promise to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s declared capital city of Jerusalem.

News of the bomb threat was first reported by the University Student News Network, a regional Farsi-language site that aggregates relevant news briefs.

“The Student Movement for Justice declared, ‘Whoever bombs the embassy’s building will receive a $100,000 award,'” the report states. “It is necessary to mention that the steps by Trump to transfer the US Embassy to Holy Qods [Jerusalem] has led to the anger and hatred of Muslims and liberators throughout the world.'”

Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on rogue regimes, told the Washington Free Beacon that terrorism of this nature is embedded in the Iranian regime’s hardline stance.

“Unfortunately, terrorism directed toward diplomats and embassies has become a central pillar of the Islamic Republic’s culture,” Rubin said. “Terrorism is lionized in Iranian schools. This bounty is more the rule than the exception. To blame Washington or Jerusalem is to blame the victim and give terrorists a veto over U.S. policy.”

Behnam Ben Taleblu, an research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, described the poster as repulsive and blamed the Iranian ruling regime for fostering such an attitude.

“This is nothing short of an invitation to a heinous act of an international terror by a student group that looks up to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror—the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
TEHRAN – New freight train connections usually only have a limited potential to make global headlines, but a new service launched from China on Thursday could be different. Its cargo – 1,150 tons of sunflower seeds – may appears unremarkable, but its destination, however, is far more interesting: Tehran, the capital of Iran .
The launch of a new rail connection between Bayannur in China ‘s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Iran was announced by the official news agency Xinhua on Thursday. Its exact path was not described in the dispatch, but travel times will apparently be shortened by at least 20 days in comparison to cargo shipping. The sunflower seeds are now expected to arrive in Tehran in about two weeks.

While the seeds are making their steady progress across Asia, there’s a growing risk of Iran and Israel <link>breaking into open conflict in the meantime. French President Emmanuel Macron has already predicted that the U.S. decision to pull out of the Iran deal would lead to war, especially after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that the country may restart its nuclear program if U.S. sanctions are imposed. Iranian rocket attacks on Wednesday and the subsequent Israeli retaliatory attacks on Thursday indicated how quickly the situation could indeed escalate.

While the United States is now urging foreign companies to wind down their operations in Iran , China appears to be doing the opposite. Thursday’s freight train connection launch was only the latest measure Beijing has taken to intensify trade relations with Iran and there seem to be no plans so far to give in to U.S. demands.

China has indicated it might defy US President Donald Trump’s sanctions on Iran by doing business with it.

During a press briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that Iran and China would “maintain normal economic ties and trade.”

“We will continue with our normal and transparent practical cooperation with Iran on the basis of not violating our international obligations,” he said. China faces the same problem U.S. allies in Europe are currently facing <link>: Even if European governments are opposed to new sanctions on Iran , European companies would have to abide by those rules or risk severe fines by the United States.

Even though they have expressed their outrage, some high-ranking European officials have already acknowledged that they would have few options to rein in the United States if it decided to punish European companies for continuing to trade with Iran .

China , however, appears more defiant.

Iran ‘s Hassan Rouhani had established a track record for bridge-building in nuclear talks with European powers

When asked whether China would order its companies to withdraw from Iran to avoid U.S. sanctions, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman indicated that Beijing might defy the Trump administration. “I want to stress that the Chinese government is opposed to the imposition of unilateral sanctions and the so-called long-arm jurisdiction by any country in accordance with its domestic laws,” he said.

China has to some extent managed to circumvent U.S. sanctions in the past and may be able to do the same again this time. Some analysts have even suggested that Chinese entities could act as intermediaries for European companies that want to continue trading with Iran , but fear violating U.S. sanctions. Such sanctions would be particularly damaging to European businesses operating in the United States, such as plane manufacturer Airbus.

Speaking to CNBC, former U.S. diplomat Carlos Pascual said that oil sales from Iran via China or Russia to the rest of the world could circumvent U.S. measures.
The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri has said his country seeks expansion in military cooperation with Afghanistan.
Gen. Baqeri reportedly informed regarding his country’s intent during a meeting with the Afghan defense minister Gen. Tariq Shah Bahrami.

“The shared backgrounds between the two countries of Iran and Afghanistan, including religion and language, have brought them together in such way that no obstacle can undermine their close relations, specially in combatting the terrorist groups,” the top Iranian General was quoted as saying by Fars News.

He also expressed the hope that the Afghan military delegation’s visit would result in more cooperation between the two countries’ armed forces.

The top Iranian General’s intent to expand military cooperation with Afghanistan comes as the country is accused of supporting the certain insurgent groups in Afghanistan.

“Iran’s desire for influence in Afghanistan remains strong. Iran seeks increased influence in Afghanistan through government partnerships, bilateral trade, and cultural and religious ties,” Pentagon stated in its report regarding Afghanistan late last year.

The report also adds that Iran provides some support to the Taliban and publicly justifies its relationship with the Taliban as a means to combat the spread of ISIS-K in Afghanistan.

“Iran’s support to the Taliban undermines the Afghan Government’s credibility, adds to instability in the region, and complicates strategic partnership agreements,” Pentagon had warned.