Iran Can Bail the U.S. Out of Afghanistan

"...The haze around Iran's nuclear program and its tussle with the US has somewhat clouded memories of Tehran's pragmatic cooperation with Washington in 2001 to unseat the Taliban after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Notwithstanding Iran's subsequent decrying of the US military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Tehran found the American-initiated ousters of Saddam Hussein on its western frontier and of the Taliban on its eastern frontier strategically advantageous.
The still violent conditions in Sistan province imply that Iran and the United States have a common interest in an Afghanistan where the Taliban should not once again become de facto authorities. Washington's mildly encouraging response to Iranian presence at the Rome confabulations is tacit recognition of this confluence.
India's involvement in Afghanistan is similar in logic to that of Iran. Although India and Afghanistan are non-contiguous and separated by the breadth of Pakistan, the fungible relationships among Pakistan's military intelligence complex, Kashmir-oriented Punjabi terrorist organizations and the Afghan Taliban have meant that the war in Afghanistan has had a direct blowback effect on New Delhi's determination to hold on to the portion of Kashmir it has administered since 1947...
Western anxiety that an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, starting next year, will leave the country to the whims of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is an existential threat not only to Iran and India but also to Russia because of its proximity to the war zone and its own history of confronting Islamist separatism in the Caucasus....
Theoretically speaking, Pakistan should be in the same boat as Iran, India and Russia in wanting a neutral Afghanistan where influences of all regional actors are roughly balanced so that cross-border jihadi furies do not tear apart Pakistan's already-frayed security. But the military establishment in Rawalpindi has sadly pursued a scenario of Pakistan's monopoly over Afghanistan's fate after the American military footprint is downsized.
Revelations that NATO forces are escorting senior Taliban leaders for secret reconciliation talks with the Hamid Karzai government without the imprimatur of Pakistan show that Washington is not sanguine about Islamabad's schemes to dominate a post-US Afghanistan. Pakistan scuppered previous behind-the-scenes rapprochement efforts within Afghanistan through untimely arrests of Taliban negotiators or by dangling Islamabad's own Afghan assets to the Americans as more reliable interlocutors....
Since Pakistani and Chinese interests lie in restoration of Taliban rule, it's up to Iran, India and Russia - states with convergent interests about a peaceful, unified Afghanistan - to brainstorm as a smaller group about converting their visions into reality..... Only a fully engaged Obama administration can ensure that Afghanistan avoids the fate of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where each neighboring power has its own favored armed group, and the result is the so-called endless "Africa's world war."
An informal alliance of Russia, Iran and India can be scuppered by the domestic anti-Iranian lobby in the US, which muddies the waters with scare stories of alleged plots and funds from Tehran aimed at weakening the American hold in Afghanistan. Incredulous claims that Iran is financing or arming the Taliban also circulate, quoting anonymous sources. Should the Obama administration overcome these confounding voices and unequivocally endorse Iran's role in a final settlement of Afghanistan, Moscow and Delhi can take cues and start planning the regional endgame of the war...."