{"id":773,"date":"2015-06-13T15:56:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T15:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=773"},"modified":"2020-02-07T19:01:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T19:01:03","slug":"iran-backs-taliban-with-cash-and-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=773","title":{"rendered":"Iran backs Taliban with cash and arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\">06.12. 2015 &#8211; MarketWatch &#8211; By Margherita Stancati &#8211; KABUL &#8211;<\/span> When Abdullah, a Taliban commander in central Afghanistan, needs more rifles and ammunition, he turns to the same people who pay his $580-a-month salary: his Iranian sponsors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><!--more-->\u201cIran supplies us with whatever we need,\u201d he said.<br \/>\nAfghan and Western officials say Tehran has quietly increased its supply of weapons, ammunition and funding to the Taliban, and is now recruiting and training their fighters, posing a new threat to Afghanistan\u2019s fragile security.<br \/>\nIran\u2019s strategy in backing the Taliban is twofold, these officials say: countering U.S. influence in the region and providing a counterweight to Islamic State\u2019s move into the Taliban\u2019s territory in Afghanistan.<br \/>\nThe Taliban\u2019s aggressive military push and the new momentum toward peace negotiations between them and Kabul also raises the possibility that some of their members could eventually return to power.<br \/>\n\u201cIran is betting on the re-emergence of the Taliban,\u201d said a Western diplomat. \u201cThey are uncertain about where Afghanistan is heading right now, so they are hedging their bets.\u201d<br \/>\nHabib Khan Totakhil in Kabul and Felicia Schwartz in Washington contributed to this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>06.12. 2015 &#8211; MarketWatch &#8211; By Margherita Stancati &#8211; KABUL &#8211; When Abdullah, a Taliban commander in central Afghanistan, needs more rifles and ammunition, he turns to the same people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1578,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}