Why Afghanistan is key to containing Iran

For more information:
https://www.dawn.com/news/1339411
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-afghanistan-mineral-reserves-235962


In Trump's search for containing Iran, one of the most viable options is Afghanistan.

In the campaign Trump talked about how the Iraq War knocked out a "block" in the Middle-East spheres of influence. A country with traditionally Sunni and secular leadership, Saddam Hussein under the Ba'ath party, was knocked out and replaced with Iranian dominance stretching from Tehran to Beirut unabated.

Now the areas in which Iranian dominance can be countered are scarcer. In Syria and Yemen, the two countries in which Saudi Arabia is waging proxy wars, the conflicts are unlikely to produce the results necessary to beat back Iran. Both sides chosen by Saudi Arabia - the Syrian rebels and the Hadi government - are exceedingly unpopular with the people of each nation and these proxy wars are, subsequently, doomed to fail.

As for Iraq, well, nobody is interested in regime change there to counter Iranian influence.

Afghanistan, however, has a small Shi'ite population and has enormous economic potential. Instead of engaging in proxy wars in Yemen or Syria, which destabilize the region, a US focus to strengthen Afghanistan against Iran would mean that a new "block" would emerge in Iraq's place.

The Trump Administration has even suggested that they will do such a thing. Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, has suggested that the Afghan policy will be comprehensive and will include a regional approach, focusing on India, Pakistan, the whole South Asian area and "especially Iran." This suggests that the Afghan policy will include making sure that the government in Kabul has no reproachment with Iran and acts as a bulwark against growing Iranian influence.

However, such stabilizaton of Afghanistan would be insufficient to completely counter Iranian dominance in the Middle-East, but it would be a key starting point. Other options include making Iraq more neutral in the Sunni-Shi'ite proxy wars, increased relations between an anti-Iranian Afghanistan and Iraq and between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

In any case, an anti-Iran Afghanistan would give many in Washington a renewed desire to pursue stability in Afghanistan. It would certainly go ways to containing Iranian influence and stop their meddling.