Khamenei Aide Says Iran’s Afghan Policy Hinges On Taliban Behavior
A top foreign policy advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said relations with Afghanistan can be good if the Taliban respects Iran’s interests.
A top foreign policy advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said relations with Afghanistan can be good if the Taliban respects Iran’s interests.
Kamal Kharazi, who heads Khamenei’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations and was foreign minister 1997-2005 under reformist president Mohammad Khatami, told a website in Iran Wednesday that Tehran had no wish to interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, if its interests were respected by the new rulers in Kabul.
Khamenei’s advisor mentioned Pakistan as the Taliban’s “main supporter,” and suggested that both Islamabad and the Taliban had an interest in Afghanistan’s new rulers moderating their behavior. Peace in Afghanistan and in the region could result if this happened, Kharazi said.
Iran cautiously accepted the Taliban takeover early on, hinting that the movement had changed since it controlled the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Tehran also saw United States withdrawal from Afghanistan as a strategic victory in its overall stated goal of ending the American military presence in the region.
Kharazi said Iran would closely watch events in the neighboring country for any signs of the reemergence of “terrorist groups.” Tehran regards both the Islamic State group (Isis/Daesh) and al-Qaeda as a danger for Shiites in general and Iran in particular.
He also called on the Taliban to curb drug smuggling to Iran, which has a porous border with Afghanistan. While some smuggled opium and other narcotics targets Iran, much is destined for foreign markets.
Kharazi most of all emphasized the security and rights of Shiites in Afghanistan. The Taliban have not been friendly toward Shiites, with dozens of bloody attacks against the community while they fought against US troops and the former Afghan government. Although some of these attacks went unclaimed or were attributed to the Islamic State, many in Afghanistan blamed the Taliban.
Iran “naturally has legitimate interests [in Afghanistan] that must be secured…[including] protection of the rights of Shiites and other groups and the preservation and the propagation of the Persian language, as part of the Afghan people’s heritage,” Kharazi said.
Given the Taliban are primarily Pashtuns, Kharazi’s concern for the Persian language is a defense of Tajik and Hazara communities whose mother tongue is Dari, an old and original dialect of Persian. Historically, Persian has been the main administrative and educational language in Afghanistan, benefitting from centuries of literature and scientific writings.
Kharazi emphasized that Iran’s policy toward Afghanistan would be “completely tied to the behavior of the Taliban.” If the new rulers “move toward an inclusive government, protection and security for all ethnic and religious groups, confront terrorism and adopt a policy of good neighborliness,” Iran was ready for cooperation and would assist Afghanistan with “all its experience and potential.”
The change in the Iranian media scene started with the appointment of Payman Jebelli as the head of the country's state television as the most significant media outlet directly under the supervision of Khamenei and his office. A long-time manager at state television, he has close links with Khamenei’s office and key hardliners.
Minister of Culture Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili made the remark while introducing Farshad Mehdipour, another hardline journalist and a relative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's wife as his deputy minister for the press. Mehdipour was previously the editor of conservative e Sobh-e No newspaper that was Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's mouthpiece when he was the mayor of Tehran. Esmaili introduced Mehdipour as a “theoretician” in news dissemination.
No one knows how much the government spends on state media, but in mid-2010s before the effective devaluation of Iran currency, the state television budget alone was close to one billion dollars, with more than 40,000 employees in 2020 compared with CNN’s 4,000. Thousands of people also work for hundreds of state newspapers and websites.
Another step in the restructuring of the media landscape is the belated appointment of the managing director and members of the high council of the official news agency IRNA, which stands for the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Esmaili appointed Ali Naderi, an ultraconservative journalist and the former editor of hardline Raja News, a pro-Ahmadinejad and pro-Paydari Party news outlet as the new managing director of IRNA. Naderi has said that IRNA is going to be "the news agency of the government and the political system [Nezam]”, which is also a nickname for Khamenei used by his devotees when they wish to distance him from his style of micromanagement.
IRNA has traditionally been under the control of presidential administrations, usually echoing the ideas and highlighting 'accomplishments' of the country's presidents. Its political slant changed with every presidential election. It was a proreform news outlet under President Mohammad Khatami, a hardline agency under Ahmadinejad and a moderate conservative news organization under President Hassan Rouhani.
With the appointment of the members of the High Council of Policymaking of IRNA, it appears that Tehran is serious about tightening its grip on the media, news dissemination and all sorts of cultural activities. The new council members are hardliners mainly supporting the ultraconservative Paydari Party, although Mehdipour is better characterized as a member of Qalibaf's self-proclaimed neo-con group.
Esmaili appointed another Paydari Party affiliate Mohammad Khazaei as deputy culture minister for cinema.
Meanwhile, the new deputy for cultural affairs who oversees books and other publications, Yasser Ahmadvand, and the acting deputy minister for artistic affairs Mahmoud Shaloui whose mandate is to make sure that musical and theatrical activities, as well as paintings and sculptures strictly comply with Shiite standards, are also well-known hardliner figures.
Even before introducing the new changes, dozens of news outlets in Iran belonged to either Khamenei's office (Kayhan, Khorasan and a fleet of social media platforms, etc.) or the revolutionary guards IRGC (Tasnim, Fars, Sepah News, Basij News, Basirat, Javan, Sobh-e Sadeq, etc). Others such as Mehr (Islamic Propagation Organization), Hemayat, Mizan News (the Judiciary) and scores of others were funded by various government offices.
The question now is that if the entire system is becoming part and parcel of the “regime”, or Khamenei’s office, and there is no room for factional politics, why the government needs over 50 TV channels and tens of news agencies, newspapers and news websites. Their only purpose appears to be for insider groups to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from state coffers.