Western intermediaries are trying to persuade arch foes Iran and the United Stat...
WASHINGTON - Western intermediaries are trying to persuade arch foes Iran and the United States to cooperate on bolstering security in Afghanistan as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to extract America from its longest war, according to three source familiar with the efforts.
The White House declined to comment and the U.S. State Department did not respond to requests for comment.The United States and Iran share an interest in ensuring that a departure of the more than 20,000 U.S.-led foreign troops does not plunge Afghanistan into a civil war that restores the Taliban’s harsh version of Islamic rule, and does not allow al Qaeda or other Sunni Muslim extremist groups to expand there.
This approach has given “political supremacy” to the Taliban as they are gaining militarily, the message said. Taliban leaders, it continued, have told their Iranian interlocutors they will not “accept anything less than a Taliban-dominated government” that rules “an Islamic emirate.” Several back-channel efforts, the sources said, are driven by a hope that cooperation on Afghanistan could lead to negotiations to lower the tensions ignited when Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 international agreement designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief.
Iran “could be very valuable,” said Ali Jalali, who served as Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban interior minister. “This is a very good opportunity for Iran.”
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