Afghans React to Iranian Warning

As I noted on September 16, Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah-e Pasdaran) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari stated that Iran has prepared a "crushing" (literally "teeth-breaking") response against the weak points of those who had occupied Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today members of Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga (lower house of the National Assembly) addressed this statement. Dr. Abdul Kabir Ranjbar, representative of Kabul and head of the Democratic Party of Afghanistan, is reported to have stated that attacking U.S. interests in Afghanistan from abroad would be a violation of the territorial integrity of Afghanistan and a breach of international law. Several other deputies made similar statements, though I do not yet have the texts. I would welcome help from anyone who can get them.

So far I have found no comment from the National Front, a group in the Afghan National Assembly that has received some assistance from Iran. The Afghan government and the Iranian embassy in Kabul declined to comment. The Ambassador of Iran to Afghanistan, Muhammad Reza Bahrami, was removed from his post by Tehran soon after General Jafari's statement. Bahrami has represented Iran in Afghanistan in various capacities for twenty-three years.