Common Ground

During the region conference on Afghanistan, The Afghanistan Presidential envoy Richard Holbrooke and Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Mohammad Mehdi Akhondzadeh, bumped into each other.

“It was cordial, unplanned and they agreed to stay in touch,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters at the end of the conference. “I myself did not have any direct contact with the Iranian delegation.”

I am pretty sure no one in the Obama Administration really believes that diplomacy will change Iran's mind with regards to their nuclear ambitions in the Middle East.

Some officials, including Mrs. Clinton, are skeptical that Iran’s leaders will ever embrace the American overtures. But reaching out, analysts say, keeps Iran on the defensive by demonstrating to the Europeans, the Russians and others that the United States is sincerely trying. And talking about Afghanistan is easier than confronting more divisive issues, especially Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

But with regards to Afghanistan, there may be some common ground: Iran has one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the world.

And what's more

Iran straddles a major smuggling route to the West from neighbouring Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium and its derivatives, morphine and heroin.

So drugs are plentiful here, and cost a lot less than replacement therapy.

Interdicting the drugs coming into Iran would be in Iran's interest as well as our own.

The drug problem is so bad within Iran that

The rise in drug use and smuggling has strained Iran’s police forces and prisons, as well as its economy, and aggravated rifts along the population’s main fault lines: young versus old, religious versus secular, modernist versus traditional. Drug abuse in Iran often gets overshadowed by other issues—namely Tehran’s nuclear program—but experts say, if left unchecked, it may leave Iran with large social, demographic, and health problems for generations.

Meanwhile, the US has its own vested interest in stemming the drug trade

American authorities are planning a broad new campaign to choke off the prime source of financing for terrorists in Afghanistan, sending in dozens of federal drug enforcement agents to disrupt the country's massive opium trade and the money that streams to the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The surge of narcotics agents, which would boost the number of anti-drug officials inside Afghanistan from a dozen to nearly 80, would bolster a strategy laid out last week by the Obama administration to use U.S. and NATO troops to target "higher level drug lords."

Detailed plans described to members of Congress behind closed doors earlier this month suggest the effort will be modeled after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's campaign against drug cartels in South America.

There is no doubt that Iran will be conflicted on this issue. Iran does not want the US to be successful in Afghanistan. The possibility of US troops garrisoning in countries on both their Eastern and Western borders will not make them feel comfortable about their security. Especially if they ever decided to act on their regional ambitions.

And yet Iran has got to do something to curtail the flood of drugs into their country. And having someone interdicting on that side of the border would be useful in our efforts.

So we'll see if the President can make this uneasy alliance work out.