Iran paid Taliban ‘bounties’ to attack American airbase.

Iran paid Taliban ‘bounties’ to attack American airbase. IRAN paid the Taliban "bounties" to attack an American airbase in Afghanistan, an unearthed account shows. The Taliban have almost seized the whole of Afghanistan after making huge territorial gains over the last few weeks. Encouraged by the US withdrawing its troops, the Taliban have captured major cities including Kandahar and Herat, and are now closing in on the capital, Kabul. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has also fled the country for neighbouring Tajikistan, according to reports quoting Afghan officials on Sunday. As thousands of people are fleeing Kabul and other areas, Iran has said it will provide shelter to Afghan refugees arriving at its borders. Shi’ite Muslim-majority Iran has a complicated relationship with the Sunni Muslim Taliban. The fundamentalist Islamic movement is despised by Iranians and in 1998 Tehran nearly ordered military action against the group. It came after Taliban fighters killed eight Iranian diplomats and a reporter for Tehran’s official news agency IRNA at the Iranian consulate in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. However, an unearthed report appears to reveal that in recent years Tehran has also bankrolled Taliban militants. A recently resurfaced CNN article from last year claims that US intelligence shows how Tehran paid the Taliban “bounties” to attack Americans in Afghanistan. The illicit payments were linked to six Taliban attacks in 2019, including a suicide bombing at the US’ former Bagram Air Base in northern Afghanistan. Two car bombs were said to have been involved in the attack, which killed two members of the public and injured more than 70 others. The Pentagon did not report any US personnel among the casualties, but four servicepeople were injured according to CNN, which said it had obtained documents from the Pentagon. The news network said two intelligence sources had confirmed that the Iranian government had made the payments to fund the attacks. Money was reportedly paid to the Haqqani Network, a Taliban splinter group. Just a month after the Bagram attack, the US killed Iran’s top military commander, General Qasem Soleimani, in an airstrike at Iraq’s Baghdad airport. The Bagram attack reportedly involved a “suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device”. Around 10 Taliban militants had a shootout with local government forces before being killed by US airstrikes.