Afghan officials say Iran has asked them not to sign the agreement, a gesture they take to be interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs; they have also alleged that Iran has been harassing Afghan diplomats in Tehran since the agreement was announced.
Fazl Hadi Muslimyar, head of the upper house of the Afghan parliament, said the new Iranian ambassador, Abolfazl Zohrevand, had urged several Afghan senators to vote against the US-Afghan partnership agreement when it is presented in parliament for ratification. Afghan lawmakers were outraged, saying Iran was interfering with Afghanistan’s internal affairs, although it is perfectly permissible for diplomats to lobby parliamentarians and tell them what their governments think of legislation.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast expressed Iran’s concern about the pact, saying “the status of US military bases in Afghanistan is unclear and the security duties of US forces lack transparency.”
He said, “We believe the presence of foreign forces, including the US forces and its allies, is the root cause of insecurity and instability in the regional countries and especially in Afghanistan.”
The agreement, which was signed by US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai early in May, covers US-Afghan relations in the decade after 2014. While it specifies that the US will not use Afghan soil for attacks against its neighbors, it leaves open the possibility of military action in the event of threats to Afghanistan from those neighbors.
The status and exact number of US forces that will remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014 will be worked out in a separate agreement.
President Karzai has sought to placate the fears of Afghanistan’s antsy neighbors about the pact: “There is no threat from Afghanistan’s soil to our neighbors,” he told reporters one day after inking the agreement.
But Iran wants the dismantling of all US military bases and complete withdrawal of all US forces from Afghanistan, something Afghanistan and the United States see as detrimental to their efforts to combat the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier summoned the Iranian ambassador for clarification of his remarks to Afghan lawmakers, but Zohrevand only dispatched embassy First Consul Syed Muhammad Kazem Naeemi. This was a diplomatic problem per se because Afghan officials had complained previously that Ambassador Zohrevand was “very arrogant” and “behaved very undiplomatically” when he presented his credentials to President Karzai late in April.
Afghan officials meeting the consul told him the pact was in line with international laws and Afghanistan’s national interests and that, as a sovereign nation, Afghanistan reserved the right to sign such pacts.
While no official response has emerged from Iran, state-run Radio Mashhad carried a report quoting Muslimyar as saying Ambassador Zohrevand never asked Afghan lawmakers to reject the pact.
“According to reports by some media outlets, Mr. Muslimyar said the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran never asked the Afghan parliament and senate to reject the partnership agreement between Afghanistan and the USA,” said the report.
Separately, a senior Afghan government official told Agence France Presse (AFP) that Iran is “constantly intimidating” Afghan diplomats in Tehran.
“They are being chased by Iranian security forces all over the place. Their movements have been restricted,” the unnamed official said, adding, “This is all to do with the strategic pact. They are unhappy.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Musazai acknowledged “problems” faced by Afghan diplomats in Tehran but said the diplomats are not in any danger.
The Afghan government also released a video last week showing two Afghans confessing to spying for Iran. In one, Afghan citizens Syed Kamal and Syed Husain confess they are part of Sipah-e-Muhammad, a banned Shia militant outfit based in Pakistan that has attacked Sunni Pakistanis in tit-for-tat violent rivalry with the Sunni militant group, Sipah-e-Sahaba.
Kamal said that Iran’s Pasdaran was actively recruiting and training militants from across the world and aims to revive Hezb-e-Islami, the Jihadi faction led by Afghan commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which is already part of the insurgency in Afghanistan.
The other accused, Husain, said he was primarily gathering intelligence and working as a courier. He appeared to say he was part of a group that recently attempted to plant roadside bombs in Kabul, an attempt that failed because Afghan security forces defused the two bombs before they went off.
Kamal’s and Husain’s arrests come a few days after Afghan authorities arrested an Afghan journalist, Andolvahed Hakimi, on charges of spying for Iran. He worked as the Kabul bureau chief for the Fars news agency.
Fars has said that the arrest was a “misunderstanding” on the part of the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s primary spy agency.
These events are just the latest frictions between the two neighbors. They have previously sparred over such issues as the repatriation of the one million Afghan refugees in Iran, border violations by border guards and Iranian arms for the Taliban.