US officials in Afghanistan claim to have intercepted arms sent from Iran to the Taliban. The Bush administration had earlier accused Iran of abetting Shia death squads in Iraq, and more recently claiming that Tehran was backing both Sunni and Shia militants in the country. The allegation of involvement in Afghanistan would suggest that US strategists are bent on making the case that Iran is concertedly opposing American efforts in the "war on terror" in the region. [NYT, April 18]

[This strikes us as unlikely. Few remember it now, but Iran hated the Taliban so much that it closed ranks with the US in 2001 in the campaign to oust them.—WW4R]

From Madrid11.net Security Briefs, April 18

See our last posts on Afghanistan and Iran.