Tehran Builds on Outreach to Taliban

[Catya Sher]

Ignoring Niazi,
here is the latest twist in this news.

Press TV today reports that these rumors may be just rumors.
At least as far as the Turkish press is concerned

There is still no denial from Teheran itself, as far as I know. As of yet.
Could change.

Iranian Embassy in Ankara has strongly dismissed the Turkish media reports claiming that Tehran has allowed the Taliban terrorist organization to set up an office in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan.


The Iranian mission, in a statement released on Friday, described the allegations as unrealistic, ridiculous and bogus. The statement highlighted that the Taliban killed Iranian diplomats and correspondents when they took control of Afghanistan.

“The US attempts to engage in talks with the Taliban is no secret to anyone. Americans have been trying for years to make projections and link Iran to terrorist groups in a bid to cover up their fiasco in Afghanistan. This is while Iran has greatly contributed to campaign against terrorism and has lost a large number of its security forces fighting terrorists,” the statement added.

The Iranian Embassy further noted that more than 120,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001, and terrorism has been on the rise in the Asian country since then.

“Production of narcotics has increased by 30 percent (in Afghanistan), and there have been no improvement in Afghanistan's infrastructure. Rising terrorism and insecurity in the region have been the result of US presence in Afghanistan under any pretext,” the statement pointed out.

The Iranian Embassy statement concluded that dissemination of baseless anti-Iran allegations will only instigate the public opinion, create an atmosphere of pessimism, damage Iran-Turkey national interests, and is in line with efforts being made by certain Western states to fan the flames of enmity and discord in the region.

[Shah-i-Kot]

Neither the Taliban nor Iran would ever admit to this news report.

[Catya Sher]

If you see updates, please post them here.

Have to keep an eye out for more developments.
It's true that neither side would
be willing to admit to this - probably.
Maybe not yet.

Later.

[Shah-i-Kot]

http://indrus.in/articles/2012/08/03/whos_afraid_of_the_taliban_16763.html

However, another development goes to corroborate the counterpoint that, after all, the Taliban could have a mind of their own and might be acting as independent players. This impression stems from the latest disclosure by the Wall Street Journal, quoting western diplomats, that the Taliban have opened an office in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan in late May. Of course, it is possible to give more than one spin to the decision by Tehran to permit the Taliban to keep an office on Iranian soil. The WSJ estimates that the Iranian move aims at challenging the Afghan government and the Americans over their strategic pact and to fuel the insurgency so as to accelerate the departure of the US forces.

The WSJ (here) understandably focuses on the Iran decision from a single motivated angle, namely, to highlight Tehran’s support to the Afghan insurgency. But the WSJ completely overlooks that it takes two to tango and something startling happened here when the Taliban decided to accept the offer of Iranian hospitality. That is, considering that this was the very same militant force that once executed 9 Iranian diplomats in cold blood in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Be that as it may, the irreducible minimum here is that Tehran is not put off any longer by the Taliban’s stigma as a Wahhabi outfit nurtured attentively by Saudi Arabia in the 1990s under the watchful eye of its then spy chief Prince Turki al-Faisal as the charioteer of militant Islam in the region and as the principal instrument of US-Saudi regional policies directed against Iran. In sum, Tehran too seems to recognize that the Taliban are no longer the exclusive proxy force of any country but are instead open to keeping diverse external contacts.

[Shah-i-Kot]

This information below is from MK Bhadrakumar. He really needs to start separating the Afghan insurgency from Pakistan because Pakistan supports the NATO war/Karzai regime with illegal supply routes that violate Pashtun autonomy.

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2012/11/06/us-wants-afghans-to-have-more-religion/

By the way, for the uninitiated, it is also useful to know that Afghan mountains keep dark secrets. Recently, a top delegation of Iran’s Pasdaran paid an unpublicized visit to confabulate with the Taliban’s Quetta Shura. Would the Taliban have acted on their own? Why did Pakistan acquiesce with it? Suffice to say, Pakistan has its own existential dilemmas via-a-vis the US, which the Saudis can’t do much about