General: Iran sent arms to Taliban

The Taliban have mounted an insurgency against NATO coalition forces.

WASHINGTON POST

KABUL, Afghanistan — A top NATO commander said Thursday that a shipment of weapons intercepted by international forces in western Afghanistan earlier this month clearly came from Iran and almost certainly was sent here with the knowledge of “at least the Iranian military.”

U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill, NATO’s senior commander in Afghanistan, said a convoy of weapons captured Sept. 6 in the far western province of Farah — which shares a long border with Iran — was transporting “upscale” roadside bombs that had the hallmarks of those made in Iran and used with lethal regularity against U.S. forces in Iraq.

“Field analysis of those devices that were found profiled them clearly as ones that had been used in Iraq” and that, according to intelligence sources, are manufactured in Iran, McNeill said in an interview.

“I think there is sufficient intelligence to put together a picture that says this convoy that we intercepted the other day, which clearly geographically originated in Iran, and other things that we’ve encountered — it would be hard for me to imagine that they had come into Afghanistan without the knowledge of at least the military in Iran,” McNeill said.

“Who is that military?” he said. “Likely the Republican Guard Corps, could be the Quds Force part of that,” he said, referring to the Iran’s elite military corps and its unit that specializes in covert operations.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that international forces had intercepted the convoy in Farah province, a remote and sparsely populated area of desert and swampland, as it apparently was seeking a less-traveled route into Afghanistan.

International forces captured two smaller shipments of sophisticated roadside bombs believed to be from Iran in April and May in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, a stronghold of the Taliban insurgency.