Defense Secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, while visiting U.S. troops in Bagram, said that at one point earlier in the war, U.S. special operations troops actually worked, albeit indirectly, alongside the Iranian military. The Iranians were fighting together with Afghan rebels in western Afghanistan against the Taliban. U.S. special operations soldiers at the time were on the ground, helping the same group of rebels, and thus also indirectly working with, and helping, the Iranian fighters. The situation arose because of Iran's proximity to Afghanistan - it shares Afghanistan's western border - and its long opposition to the Taliban, which the U.S. was trying to destroy.

Iran condemned the Sept. 11 attacks shortly after they occurred, and at times, the Iranians have seemed to generally support the U.S.-led campaign. That has led U.S. officials, including Secretary of State General, Colin Powell, to say they wanted to explore the possibility of closer relations. Iran remains, however, on the State Department's list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

Iran has not opened its military bases to U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan, nor has it openly allowed U.S. forces to use its airspace. However, it has privately promised to help rescue any U.S. pilot whose plane crashes while flying over Iran. Then again, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Guide, has accused the U.S. and Britain of committing war crimes during their campaign inside Afghanistan against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda network. The conservative clerics, led by the Khamenei, oppose reconciliation with the U.S.

The United States and Iran have been bitter enemies for more than 20 years and regularly accuse each other of “evil” acts. The cinders of war in Afghanistan are still hot and once again, the U.S. and Iran are trading accusations.

Talking to al-Hayat newspaper on December 21, Condoleezza Rice, U.S. President, George W. Bush's national security adviser, reiterated that the U.S. has "a major problem" with Iran over its "support for terrorist activities against the United States and in the Middle East." She specifically restated allegations that Iran was involved in a bomb attack that killed 19 personnel at a U.S. military complex in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar in 1996. Rice's statements came the day after Iranian government officials, in a report on state television, accused U.S. forces of attacking an Iranian-registered Saudi oil tanker in the Gulf.

The Bush administration, for its part, has continued to accuse Iran of supporting terrorism, maintaining trade sanctions against the country and vetoing its application to join the World Trade Organization.

Despite such a public stance, on the ground in Afghanistan, a significant portion of U.N., U.S. and European aid being sent to Afghanistan is funneled through Iran.

Public Faces

A significant amount of public statements are indeed meant for public consumption. The reality is that Iran now feels that it is in a position to outmaneuver the Saudis for regional leadership. Saudi support for the Taliban stemmed in part from their concern to keep Iran in check, because the Taliban were bitterly opposed to the Shiite school of religious thought. However, the removal of the Taliban and the vehement American and western targeting of the Saudi interpretation of Islam has opened doors for Iran to score points. The Iranians have not forgotten the support given by the Saudis to Saddam during the long and bitter Iran-Iraq war.

The Iranian Revolution accompanied Tehran's policies of exporting the revolutionary creed, spurring Saudi Arabia into reaction. Riyadh, seeing it not only as a Shiite threat, but also as a threat to its monarchial system, started funding and supporting Sunni groups to counter Iran. The subsequent Iran-Iraq war added the Arab/non-Arab factor into the tussle. Later, the anti-Soviet effort led by the U.S. with matching funds from Saudi Arabia created another tremor where Sunni Pashtun groups were gaining ground at the expense of Shiite groups, obliging Iran to act in order to preclude a pro-Saudi regime next door.

U.S.-Iranian relations showed signs of thawing under former president Bill Clinton when reformist President, Mohammed Khatami, was elected in 1997. Apart from supporting the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, Iran is also eminently figuring in the fledgling anti-Iraq campaign the Bush Administration wants to initiate.

The western part of Afghanistan –  around Herat –  has many Shiite Muslims with close ties to Iranians just across the border. The disappearance of the Taliban has reduced Iran's worries on that border. s

Powell has reiterated an explicit statement that it is U.S. policy to overthrow Saddam Hussein and that "we are constantly reviewing ideas, plans, concepts" to achieve that goal. Powell indicated that a State Department team, led by Ryan Crocker, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs, was in northern Iraq to evaluate the proposition of "putting in place an armed opposition inside Iraq."

The freedom to butcher Palestinians granted to hardline Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Shatilla and Sabra, clearly indicates the Bush Administration favors a powerful Zionist state towering over its Arab neighbors. This requires not only the complete destruction of its Palestinian opponents, but also of Iraq and others who may harbor any designs against it.

The Afghan model of finding local opponents and backing them with brute airpower seems to please U.S. war planners. In Iraq, they seek such a force through the Kurds, whom Saddam has brutalized over the years, in addition to the equally abused Shiites.

The Crocker team has been talking to the Kurds, but the central question is: would Turkey, which brutalizes the Kurds living within its borders, agree to empower the Kurds? Or is Turkey being assured that once Iraq is subjugated, the Kurds will then be dispensed away with?

General Powell, chief of military operations in the 1991 war against Iraq, and who is often derided for allowing Saddam to survive, has urged that the strength of opposition in northern Iraq be examined, and that the administration explore the prospect of bringing Iraqi exiles based in Iran into play as part of a "southern alliance" with Shiite Muslims in Iraq.

Undoubtedly, Iran will welcome America's working with the "southern alliance", but would the Arabs welcome such a possibility? Saddam seems to be reincarnating his role of inviting U.S. wrath. Since September 11, Saddam and his deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, have engaged in saber rattling toward Kuwait, providing the U.S. with justification to launch another campaign against Iraq.

On December 5, U.S. congressional leaders sought to frame the justification for attacking Saddam. A letter addressed to Bush, signed by Senators Trent Lott, Joseph I. Lieberman and John McCain, among others, stated that, "For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them…We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later."

Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group devoted to overthrowing of Saddam Hussein, was born into a wealthy Iraqi Shiite banking family and earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago. In November of 1993, Chalabi presented the former Clinton administration with a detailed, four-phase war plan, along with an urgent plea for money to finance it. Clinton gave him funds and CIA support coordinated by Bob Baer, the agent in charge. But the March 1995 insurrection failed, and by late 1996, the Iraqi Army had all but driven Chalabi's operation out of northern Iraq.

However, Chalabi was not content to be overlooked, and the INC soon emerged as a rallying point for political conservatives and many former senior officials who had run the Gulf War for George Bush Sr. In February 1998, forty prominent Americans - including Caspar Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, and Donald Rumsfeld, all former Secretaries of Defense - signed an open letter to Clinton echoing the 1993 plan. Today, many of the signers are in positions of power, especially Richard Perle, a longtime conservative foreign-policy adviser in Washington who has turned the obscure Defense Policy Board, which he chairs, into a powerful platform for advancing policies dear to the Republican right. Among those who helped Perle draft this letter is former New York hardline pro-Israeli congressman Stephen Solarz.

According to Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker magazine, Khatami’s government agreed to permit INC forces and their military equipment to cross the Iranian border into southern Iraq, and with special U.S. approval, a U.S.-government-financed INC liaison office was opened in Tehran.

Iran feels that the common front against Saddam will help restore relations with the U.S. Of course, such a war set-up comes with CIA operatives, and Iran seems to have forgiven the Agency's hoisting of the hated Shah to the extent that it is ready to work with them.

Hersch says the Washington establishment is elated at the success of the Afghan model and the INC plan echoes the model. Iran is part of the Afghan mission and could well be the spearhead of the Iraqi mission, with Chalabi emerging as the Karzai of Baghdad.