Al-Qaeda could be behind a statement by a Taliban commander that has attributed the success against NATO forces to Iran’s help, believes Gareth Porter, a US scholar and journalist.
The reason that this statement has become common knowledge in the US is that the office of the director of the US national intelligence agency gave answers to questions on the record to the Senate intelligence committee last February which claimed that this Taliban commander’s statement was evidence that Iran was supplying military assistance to the Taliban.
However, Gareth Porter believes the Taliban commander was putting out disinformation.
“I decided to check that out and actually went to the office of the Pentagon that is responsible for investigating road-side bombs in Iran and Afghanistan and asked them – what about the question of Iranian anti-tank bombs being used by the Taliban?” Porter said. “What they told me was that the real problem in Afghanistan for NATO forces travelling the highways that are being hit by road-side bombs are the old bombs that the CIA gave to the jihadists in Afghanistan during the 1980s when they were fighting Soviet troops.”