Iran Helped Al Qaeda and Taliban Flee, Rumsfeld Says

In pointed remarks that raised questions Sunday about future relations between the elected Iranian regime and the United States, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld accused the government in Tehran of helping Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters flee Afghanistan.

Asked on ABC’s “This Week” if he could confirm a Time magazine report that Iran had aided Islamic militants escaping across the Afghan border, Rumsfeld replied: “I can.”

“We have any number of reports that Iran has been permissive and allowed transit through their country of Al Qaeda,” he said.

“There isn’t any doubt in my mind but that the porous border between Iran and Afghanistan has been used for Al Qaeda and Taliban to move into Iran and find refuge, and that the Iranians have not done what the Pakistan government has done: put troops along the border and prevent terrorists from escaping . . . into their country.”

Asked if the United States planned any response to Iran’s actions, Rumsfeld said, “We don’t announce things we’re going to do before we do them.”

Rumsfeld’s comments were the latest in a series of signals that the Washington-Tehran relationship--warmer after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iran showed signs of cooperating with the Bush administration’s war on terrorism--has cooled.

Until about a month ago, U.S. officials had expressed hope that the Afghan crisis might provide common ground for the United States and Iran to improve their relations, which were broken in 1979 when Islamic militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

When the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan began, Iran pledged to help with search and rescue missions if U.S. pilots were lost. And Iranian diplomats backed U.S. and United Nations efforts to build an alternative regime in Afghanistan.

But last month, President Bush said Tehran had been trying to exercise influence that could undermine the new, internationally backed, broad-based Afghan government. He warned the Iranian regime to stay out of Afghan affairs.

If the warning was ignored, Bush said, the U.S. would deal with Iran “in diplomatic ways, initially.”

Last week, in his State of the Union address, Bush described Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil” bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

And on Sunday, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice joined Rumsfeld in lashing out at Iran.

“This regime deserved to be on the list, and this regime knows it deserved to be on the list,” Rice said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” She said Iran is seeking chemical and biological weapons, improving its long-range missiles and pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities.

Rice accused Iran of trying to interfere in Afghanistan by offering its support to influential tribal leaders.

“We’re even concerned there may be Iranian attempts to surreptitiously influence Afghan politics at a very delicate time. And the president spoke out very clearly, saying that the Iranians should not try to interfere in what is a very delicate political situation in Afghanistan,” she said.

Iranian officials have denounced Bush’s comments and have denied giving any help to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. Iran’s government strongly opposed Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban regime.

“We hated each other, and we never had any commonalities,” the head of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, said Friday. The Iranian regime is Shiite Muslim, while the Taliban imposed a radical version of the more prevalent Sunni branch of Islam on Afghanistan.

Time magazine has reported that shortly before the city of Herat, in western Afghanistan, fell to opposition forces in November, about 250 senior Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters fled in a convoy, crossing into Iran.

Citing sources in Herat, the magazine said the fugitives made their escape after a high-ranking Iranian official, connected to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was dispatched to Afghanistan to offer them secret sanctuary.

Rumsfeld did not say Sunday whether Washington will act to seal Afghanistan’s border with Iran. But he characterized the problem of Iranian aid to America’s enemies as serious.

“We have any number of reports more recently that [the Iranian government has] been supplying arms in Afghanistan to various elements in the country,” Rumsfeld said.

For years, Iran has jostled for influence in Afghanistan with Pakistan and Russia, the other major powers in the region. Until the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., Pakistan supported the Taliban.

Since then, however, Pakistan has strongly backed the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld chided Iran on Sunday for not acting more like Pakistan, especially with regard to sealing its border.

Rumsfeld did acknowledge that some terrorist fighters probably have slipped into Pakistan despite the blockade.