Dr. Ansari and Iran's help revisited

Back in January, TAE noted a BBC segment on Radio Five Live in which a Dr. Ali Ansari, of the University of Saint Andrews and Chatham House, claimed that "the war in Afghanistan probably would not have succeeded as it did without Iranian help, and of course the Iranians were rewarded with the 'axis of evil'." When TAE questioned Dr. Ansari via e-mail about this rather remarkable claim, he reiterated the point saying "It is generally acknowledged that Afghanistan would not have been so swift or indeed easy had the Iranians not been on board both during and after - in the Bonn Talks."

How interesting, then, to find The Weekly Standard reporting last week that "Newly released documents provide evidence of Iranian collaboration with the Taliban in October of 2001."

Iran secretly agreed to assist the Taliban in its war against U.S. forces in October 2001, according to the transcript of a high-level Taliban official's tribunal session at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba. The seven-page transcript, as well as thousands of pages of similar documents, was released by the Pentagon on March 3 in response to litigation brought by the Associated Press.

If true, this tends to put a damper on Dr. Ansari's theory, broadcast over the BBC, that Iran extended an offer of detente to the US, and was subsequently "rewarded" with the "axis of evil" label. I've e-mailed the good Dr. about this, and will pass on any response I get.