Iran's role in Afghanistan's future

At a time of growing concern about the future of Afghanistan, the question of Tehran's role in this conflict, a topic often treated with speculation but rarely addressed in an informed manner, has again become of the highest relevance.

As was evident in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when Iranian diplomats worked with Western officials to promote a transitional government in Kabul, Iran has been, and remains, one of the most influential countries in Afghanistan and an essential interlocutor, if not partner, in any diplomatic process designed to limit the conflict there.

At a time when there can be no purely, or even mainly, military solution in Afghanistan, and when three major Western leaders, of the UK, France and Germany, have called for an international conference before the end of 2009, Iran's position has become, therefore, of renewed international importance.

However, recognition of this Iranian role, and of Iranian participation and goodwill as a precondition for peace in Afghanistan, is complicated by other considerations.

Any involvement of Iran in a multilateral negotiating process on Afghanistan encounters two obstacles. One is internal to Afghanistan: the very fragmentation of the political and regional situation within Afghanistan, a result of historic diversity compounded by years of war, makes the attainment of any political settlement, and even the most consensual of external involvements, such as might be that of Iran, all the more difficult.

The other obstacle is international: any attempt to involve Iran in negotiation or a loose multilateral process will collide with the ongoing and, in recent weeks, apparently rising tension between Iran and the West on the nuclear issue, and the related controversy over Iran's newly repressive and assertive regime, following the disputed June presidential elections. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, a broad measure of overlap between Iranian and Western, not least, US interests and goals is overridden by the exacerbated regional context.

Stance

Tehran came, in time, to regret its overall stance on Afghanistan in the 1980s. In an interview with a senior Iranian diplomat in Tehran in 2000, in Tehran, he told me that Iran had made a big mistake in not working with the communist regime, one of the three "big mistakes" of the Islamic Republic (the other two being the detention of the American hostages between 1979-1981, and the rejection of Iraqi peace offers in 1982).

The advent of the Taliban to power in 1996, led to a marked deterioration in relations: in 1998 a group of Iranian diplomats was killed by Taliban forces in the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif, and the countries came close to war. Iran had no role in 9/11 and reacted by supporting US indignation and then military action, attending the conference in Bonn in November 2001, that paved the way for the establishment of the new regime in Kabul.

However, this initial collaboration between Iran and the West did not last: former US president George W. Bush's January 2002 speech placing Iran in the "axis of evil", with Iraq and North Korea, rising tensions over Iran's nuclear programme and the conflict in Iraq after the US invasion of March 2003, where Tehran was blamed for supporting America's enemies, in effect ended cooperation.

Broad goals

Iran has, since then, pursued its goals in Afghanistan separate from the US and its Western allies. If it has cooperated with any country, it has been Russia, with whom it shares broad goals. These can be summarised as follows: (i) support for the central government under President Hamid Karzai, as a stabilising force, and opposition to the return of a Taliban government; (ii) seeking solutions to the conflict, and resultant movement of population; (iii) reducing the flow of Afghan drugs exported to, or transported via, Iran; (iv) controlling and, ideally, reducing and removing the influence and military presence of the US and, by extension, of its traditional rival in Afghanistan, Pakistan.

Against this background, Iran has, since 2001, pursued a cautious but consistent policy towards Afghanistan. It has sought to work with the Afghan government on issues of refugees and drugs. Lacking a client party, it has resorted to backing the Kabul government, and the Northern Alliance, while at the same time seeking to promote the interests of the Shiite population, about 20 per cent of the total.

More immediately, Iran has moved to establish a defensive buffer zone along its frontier, in effect seeking to annex, or at least significantly control, the three Afghan provinces along its frontier: Herat, Farah and Nimruz.

The prospects for significant cooperation with Tehran over Afghanistan, or at least of reasonable if implicit support for Western goals, are, at the moment, limited. Tehran feels its collaborative behaviour in 2001, far from being rewarded, was abused by Washington.

Nuclear issue

However, the nuclear issue is not entirely separate from the situation of Afghanistan, or indeed from the range of regional issues, including Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, on which the West and Iran have diverged in recent years. Both themes, apparently distinct, revolve around the core issue of Iran's regional role and Western recognition of this. It is regional politics, not purely military concerns, or "proliferation", that explain Iran's nuclear policy, and with this set of regional issues, Afghanistan, and, of equal importance, the rivalry with Pakistan, play a central role.

Given the fragmented nature of the Afghan political system, and the limits of Iranian influence in the country, Iran cannot deliver a settlement in Afghanistan.

However, any initiatives that seek to involve Iran in a negotiation process must take into account both Iran's specific, and in themselves not unreasonable, goals in Afghanistan, and also the broader pattern of regional rivalry and promotion of state influence of which both Afghanistan and the nuclear programme form part. At the moment, with an apparent failure by Western states to connect the different parts of Iranian policy and concern, and with a growth in pressure on Iran over nuclear matters even as the situation deteriorates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would seem that the opposite, and very dangerous, policy is being pursued.

Fred Halliday is emeritus professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics.