Ahmadinejad accuses US of ‘double game’ in Afghanistan

Trio of Israeli leaders in Washington, New York to lobby for Iran sanctions

By ICEJ News

10 Mar 2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a fiery speech on Wednesday during a visit to the Afghan capital of Kabul in which he accused the US of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan by fighting terrorists that it once supported.

At a news conference in the Afghan capital, Ahmadinejad was asked to respond to comments earlier this week by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who accused Tehran of "playing a double game" by trying to have good relations with the Afghan government while supporting the Taliban. "I believe that they themselves… are playing a double game," he responded. "They themselves created terrorists and now they're saying that they are fighting terrorists."

He was referring to American support for the Mujahadeen forces resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when Osama bin Laden and other jihadists fighting the West today first took up arms.

Elsewhere, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi spent Tuesday in marathon meetings with American officials in Washington D.C. focused on the threat from Iran but also on assessing the current situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Iranian-backed terror militia Hamas is actively trying to undermine the Palestinian Authority and preparing for the resumption of violent hostilities with Israel.

“Iran was the main threat to world peace, and [has been] gradually attempting to harvest regional instability through its proxies: Hizbullah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” Ashkenazi told a Friends of the IDF banquet in New York on Tuesday. “Therefore the international community must stop the Iranian nuclear program for its own sake. All options should remain on the table.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon is also in Washington to meet with several officials at the State Department and Members of Congress over coming days in hopes of coaxing them to speed up the process of imposing stiffer sanctions on Iran.

Israel’s vice premier Silvan Shalom is also in the US this week, and met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to urge that the Security Council impose “crippling” sanctions on Iran and place the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on an international “black list” that would restrict their ability to travel, engage in commerce, and smuggle weapons to terrorist proxies around the world.

“He should use his voice to try to ask the members of the Security Council to impose real sanctions, crippling sanctions, on Iran,” Shalom said of Ban Ki-moon. “I believe, and we believe, that the Iranians will never abandon their dream to become a nuclear superpower. We are dealing with an extreme regime that said Israel should be wiped off the map.”

Shalom also responded to a question about reconnaissance flights over Southern Lebanon which he said are necessary to keep track of the vast arsenal of missiles supplied to the Shi'ite terror militia Hizbullah by Iran and Syria. “So what do you want us to do? Not find out where they’re hiding it? It’s only because we would like to defend our people and our country.”

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