US must swiftly end catastrophic presence in Afghanistan: Iran

Iran has dismissed as “utterly bogus” the claims in some US media reports that other states are offering bounties to Taliban militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan, saying Washington must end its “catastrophic presence” in the war-torn country instead of blaming others for the crisis there.

“The US government — which has no answer to give to the families of its soldiers killed in Afghanistan — is seeking to cover up its miscalculation in Afghanistan through media hype,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Tuesday.

He added that the US is bogged down in a self-created quagmire in Afghanistan, while the blood of American soldiers is shed thousands of miles away from their own country due to the White House’s wrong policies, which have brought nothing but “years of war and bloodshed for the innocent Afghan people.”

The Iranian officials called on the US to act responsibly and end its destructive presence in Afghanistan as soon as possible instead of pointing the finger of blame at others.

Khatibzadeh also on Monday rejected “baseless” claims by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Tehran arms the Taliban, saying the allegation seeks to deflect attention from the American assistance to Daesh in Afghanistan.

“The accusations leveled by the US secretary of state amount to a type of blame game and an attempt at diverting the public opinion from Washington’s instances of assistance to Daesh,” he said.

Pompeo claimed last week, “We know that the Russians have armed the Taliban in the past, right. We know that the Iranians continue to arm them today.”

Earlier this week, the CNN claimed that Tehran had paid bounties to a Taliban faction, the Haqqani Network, for killing US and other foreign troops in Afghanistan, leading to six attacks last year including a deadly one at the US airbase in Bagram.

In June, the New York Times, citing an unnamed source, claimed that a top-secret unit within the Russian military intelligence, or the GRU, had allegedly offered monetary rewards to Taliban-linked militants to kill US troopers in the country last year.

Russia dismissed the claims as a bunch of “lies.”

ME