With careful timing that Gates described as “clearly fodder for all conspiratorialists,” Ahmadinejad arrived in Kabul just before Gates departed at the end of his own three-day visit.Earlier this week, Gates accused Tehran of playing a “double game” in Afghanistan, professing support for President Hamid Karzai’s government while trying to undermine the US-led military effort that protects it.
Speaking to reporters before departing on Wednesday, Gates said he had told Karzai Washington wanted Kabul to have “good relations with all of its neighbors.”
“But we also want all of Afghanistan’s neighbors to play an up front game dealing with the government of Afghanistan.”
Washington, which will have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, says it believes Iran provides some support for militants there, although not nearly on the same scale as in Iraq, another Iranian neighbor where US troops are fighting.
The Afghan insurgency is mainly led by Sunni Islamists, who are long sworn enemies of Shiite Iran. Iran has wide and growing influence in Afghanistan, especially in the west of the country where it has important economic ties. Millions of Afghans were refugees in Iran during three decades of war, and a dialect of Iran’s Farsi language is one of the two state languages in Afghanistan.
