UK’s Sunday Times: Iran Using Needlessly Convoluted Scheme to Fund Taliban
British Paper's Claims Cite Secret Taliban Sources, Eagerly Embraced by Others
In an article in today’s Sunday Times, the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper cites a series of unnamed “Taliban sources” who told them that the Iranian government, by way of some Iranian companies involved in the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan are “funding the Taliban” and even “paying a bounty” for each American killed.
The allegation was quickly latched onto by a number of other media sources including Fox News and MSNBC, who appear to have done no further research into the matter but simply reported it as something the paper discovered by way of its own sources.
Though the headline “Iran pays Taliban to kill Americans” plays well with the endless drumbeat of stories that Iran is just plain bad, the scheme is remarkable more for its almost absurd and surely needlessly convoluted nature.
According to the “sources,” the Iranian companies, which aren’t real but are just fronts for the Iranian government, win reconstruction contracts within Afghanistan and use that money, paid out by western nations to pay the relatively paltry bounties to a farmer who the Taliban taught to read last winter. The farmer, in turn, funds the entire operation but some of the money also gets put into Kabul Bank and funneled to Tehran, for some inexplicable reason.
Of course unsourced allegations cannot be conclusively disproven, but it does not require serious scrutiny to realize a few things about this claim, perhaps the most glaring being that the Iranian government, with an annual budget of $368 billion, is inexplicably setting up shell companies to bid on contracts to collect puny sums of money that it can funnel to “some guy” who sticks them in sacks of flour. Putting aside Iran’s historical animosity to the Taliban it seems as though even if they were looking to “fund” them the porous border between Iran and Afghanistan would allow them to do so without setting up a number of artificial hoops which are seemingly only there to make the story sound good and scary.
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MoT
September 5th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Pure theater. It smells of CIA and Mossad wet dreams.
Bill
September 6th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Does anyone remember when the Taliban murdered all of those Iranian diplomats? Now think about how we still remember and get pissed off at Iran because they held our diplomats hostage? Do you think the Iranians are more forgiving? This story is pure bull. The Iranians supported the American invasion and have always been against the Taliban. This is war propaganda.
Good luck
September 6th, 2010 at 8:36 am
I think if they developed the plot a bit it, added a Christian Evangelical Air Force intelligence officer, forced to retire by the Obama regime, it could be a best seller.
Carpenter
September 6th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Amazing. The media just keep producing a barrage of unfounded allegations. It doesn't matter that they can all be disproven, because the general impression the lazy public gets is that "Iran is evil." No smoke without fire, right? All so that the Israeli lobby can get what it wants, the economic and military destruction of a country that dares provide support for Hezbollah, which dared stand up for the massacred Shias when Israel invaded Lebanon. Unforgivable, by Israeli standards.
When the neocons invaded Afghanistan, Iran offered to help, by using their connections among the tribes in western Afghanistan, which were hostile to the Taliban. This was completely buried by the media. Instead neocon-zionist David Frum wrote a speech about Iran being in an "axis of evil" with its arch enemy Iraq, a country that invaded Iran on America's behalf, causing two million deaths.
Iran is Shia. They support the Shia government in Iraq, where many of the members have been in exile in Iran during Hussein's rule. They support this government against the al-Qaeda-loyal Sunni resistance. They support anti-Taliban tribes in western Afghanistan, against the Sunni Taliban. They have cultivated extensive contacts in the anti-Taliban Afghan government.
Sunni al-Qaeda considers Shia Iran one of its main enemies. Many Sunni radicals say that Shia Muslims are a greater enemy than Israel and the American forces in the Middle East.
So why, why, would Iran support the Sunni Taliban? How incredibly stupid.
It would be in America's best interest to make Iran one of its strongest allies. In fact, there is no country in the Middle East that wouldn't want to be America's ally – most of them are U.S. allies even now. There is no reason to make an enemy of any of them. They simply want to be left alone. They have oil, and they are more than happy to sell it to the West.
So what stops this peace from breaking out? Israel. They want the remaining 22 percent of Palestinian land. And for that, the U.S. must invade or intimidate any country that supports the Palestinian resistance – Iraq, Iran and Syria. Corrupt governments, like the Saudis, must be supported in return for keeping quiet about Palestine. Military bases must be built in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and other countries to prepare for future invasions. And so the violence begins.
To achieve peace with Iran, and any other M.E. country, is simple. Stop attacking them financially and militarily. Pull out military bases from the Middle East. Stop funding Israel's genocidal plans. All of this will substantially decrease America's financial burdens, and save American lives. It is perfect. The only thing standing in the way is the Israeli lobby and their allies among the Zionist media owners.
xjlm
September 6th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Only if he took up Teabagging, and swooned over Sara Palin…
MoT
September 6th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
If only what you say, and others have already pointed out, were repeated as much as the lies that we're force fed. Then I'd have hope things would improve.