Iranian support of the Mahdi Army in Iraq is known.  Iran arms and helps finance the group while counseling its leader, Muqtada al Sadr, in Tehran.  Further into grey areas is whether or not militia members train inside Iran.

It has been suggested previously based on captured Iranian documents in Irbil that Iran also assissted Sunni groups, and the name at the top of that list was Al Qaida in Iraq.  At the time the report came out, detractors quickly pointed out that a Shia state would not help a Sunni group, nor that a Sunni group who slaughters as many Shia as possible and considers all Shia to be apostates would want a Shia state’s help.  But the two religious sides have teamed up before against a common foe, and there’s reason to believe they would do it again.  The division is at times merely superficial.

Iran has helped turn Lebanon into nothing more than a launchpad for Hezbollah ‘martyrs.’  The nation has helped foment an entire culture of murder in Palestine.

Now, at least according to Gen. Peter Pace, Iran is sending arms shipments to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” General Pace told reporters. “It’s not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible.”

The shipment involved mortars and plastic explosives and was seized within the past month near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Markings on the plastic explosive material indicated that it was produced in Iran, General Pace said . . .

According to American intelligence officials, the support to militant groups in Iraq is so systematic that it could not be carried out without the knowledge of some senior Iranian officials. “Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of I.R.G.C. operations, the intelligence community assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Quds Force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran,” a senior intelligence official said this year. The Quds Force is an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards.

General Pace has been much more cautious about asserting involvement by senior Iranian officials.

“We know that there are munitions that were made in Iran that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” General Pace said Tuesday. “And we know that the Quds Force works for the I.R.G.C.”

“We then surmise from that one or two things,” he said. “Either the leadership of the country knows what their armed forces are doing, or that they don’t know. And in either case that’s a problem.”

There have been previous whispers of Iran’s support for Gulbuddin Hekmaytar, a former commander of the mujahideen during the Afghan-Soviet War, but these charges of Iranian involvment in the Afghanistan theater have been around for some time.  They are, however, conflicting based upon Iran opposing the Taliban previously due to the Taliban’s connections with Pakistan.