In addition to that, are there any significant indications of Tehran’s influence in Kabul?
I guess that Iran has sufficiently inoculated itself from Afghan criticism. You don’t hear a lot of complaining about Iran in Afghanistan that could be partially because the skids have been greased by Iranian cash. Iran has funded educational institutions. A lot of Afghans are being educated in Iranian universities and things like that. So, that’s also another implication. I think that you can’t really chalk up Karzai’s concerns about partnerships with the United States to the Iranian influence, but it probably hasn’t helped, and there may be a variety of other ways where Iranian funds have found their ways into the Afghan government and probably driven wedges within individuals and personalities within that government, but this is pretty murky territory, it’s hard to know exactly how. Is it significant that the U.S. is surprised by Iran giving bagloads of cash to Karzai and other members of his government? I think it’s significant that Americans are surprised. Karzai himself said that
