What is Iran up to in Afghanistan?

By Olivier Guitta

Now that Iran has been invited back to the table of negotiations on Afghanistan, I decided to revisit Iran's role in Afghanistan for the Middle East Times.

You can read the whole piece here.
Here is an excerpt:
Last week, Iran was invited to attend the international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague. This invitation was part of U.S. President Barack Obama plan to get Afghanistan's neighbors actively involved in being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. At that conference, Iran unsurprisingly criticized the occupation forces but said that it would help regarding the drug problem. The question remains: how much will Iran help?
After Pakistan and NATO, Iran is the most important player in Afghanistan. Iran has a long history with Afghanistan: Afghans settled in Iran hundreds of years ago. Today an estimated 2 million Afghans are believed to be living in the Islamic republic, but about 50 percent of them are illegal immigrants.

Iran had time and again threatened to deport the illegals, and this especially since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president. At the end of 2006 Iran announced a massive deportation of illegal Afghan workers. The idea behind it was to help Iranian workers by heavily fining employers who did not favor Iranian workers.

But some analysts have pointed out that the economic problems are just a populist smokescreen and that almost every illegal immigrant is a man living without his family and without any social protection. Afghans represent an inexpensive source of labor.

A possible factor behind Iran's continued threats to throw out the Afghan workers is because it gives them an additional card to throw down on the table if and when the time comes. Tehran has been blowing hot and cold on this issue. From April 2007 to Jan. 2008 Iran deported some 360,000 illegals. Iran realizes Kabul's vulnerability given its shaky economy. This allows them to pressure the Afghans.