Who is in Charge of Iran’s Afghanistan Policy? 

Iran’s Afghanistan policy is a failure, Ebrahim Rahimpour, Foreign Ministry Asia and Oceania director general under former President Hassan Rouhani, wrote in an opinion piece in Etemad, and he called for the administration of foreign policy to return to the Foreign Ministry. Hassan Kazemi Qomi, former senior officer of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and ambassador to Iraq, who is currently Iran’s special representative for Afghanistan, on the other hand, appears to be the most prominent voice in shaping Afghan policy. Who is in charge of Iran’s Afghanistan policy?  

• August 15: Rahimpour wrote: “Throughout the years, be it during the past year and a half, or 20 years ago … Iran’s security services, in particular the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, maintained relations with the Taliban.” He continued, “I must bluntly say that, as then deputy foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran in charge of Afghanistan, I was unaware of the dealings or motives for dealings with this group, and I am not informed about the depth of exchanges and relations.” Turning to an assessment of Iran’s Afghanistan policy, Rahimpour wrote: “We must assess success or failure of Iran’s policy toward this group and Afghanistan based on elements of interest to our national security … With regard to security, every single day there are reports of border clashes with the Taliban … Concerning the economy, Afghanistan was the fifth-largest importer of Iranian goods, but trade relations with Afghanistan have considerably declined. We have also not achieved any success with regard to the safety of the Shia and Persian speakers in Afghanistan, and not a week passes without news of massacre of the Shia in Afghanistan, or injustice and discrimination against the Persian speakers.” Rahimpour concluded: “We simply did not pass the test,” and he urged, “We must bring the conduct of foreign policy back to the institution with the necessary expertise, meaning the Foreign Ministry.” 
• August 15: “Entangling the Islamic Republic of Iran in a conflict with the Taliban is the post-exit policy of the United States,” Kazemi Qomi said in an interview with Iranian television. He went as far as calling the opposition to the Taliban regime “American” but has since taken back his accusation. 

Rahimpour did not explicitly explain what alternative course the Foreign Ministry would have pursued in Afghanistan, but if cooperation with the United States was among them, Tehran lost another opportunity to reduce tensions with Washington. Furthermore, Kazemi Qomi’s statements illustrate that the Foreign Ministry’s preferences carry little weight. The IRGC, which provided the United States with intelligence to bomb Taliban positions during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, shifted course after former President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech, and extended limited support to the Taliban, in the perhaps vain hope of gaining influence over the Afghan group. To judge by Kazemi Qomi’s statements, Iran is not about to shift course. 

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