Iran helped overthrow Taliban, candidate says

Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fought alongside and advised the Afghan rebels who helped U.S. forces topple Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the guards’ former leader says. In an interview by e-mail, Mohsen Rezaie, a candidate in Iran’s presidential elections next week, says the United States has not given Iran enough credit. He says Iran played an “important role in the overthrow of the Taliban” in 2001. Even before U.S. forces entered Afghanistan, Iran backed the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of warlords and militias from the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities. The alliance fought the ruling Taliban, a regime dominated by majority Pashtuns that imposed a harsh Sunni Islamic government. Full Story