Before there was Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was Operation Enduring Freedom. Americans tend to think of that earlier campaign for the liberation of Afghanistan as a similarly U.S.-initiated and dominated effort. But in fact the war to displace the Taliban had been underway long before the United States became involved. It was being fought by a coalition consisting of Iran, Russia, India and the Northern Alliance. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States joined this coalition and, with the essential addition of U.S. air power, Northern Alliance forces were able to take Kabul and drive the Taliban from power.

Two weeks after the fall of Kabul, all the major elements of the Afghan opposition came together at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn. The objective was to create a broadly based successor government to the Taliban. As the U.S. representative at that gathering, I worked both with the Afghan delegations and with the other national representatives who had the greatest influence among them, which is to say the Iranian, Russian and Indian envoys. All these delegations proved helpful. None was more so than the Iranians. On two occasions Iranian representatives made particularly memorable contributions. The original version of the Bonn agreement, drafted by the United Nations and amended by the Afghans who were present, neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both.

Of course, even as Iranian diplomats and military officers were supporting U.S. efforts to install and sustain a successor government to the Taliban, other Iranians with official connections were, and are, rendering support to radical Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). It was this Iranian support of terrorism directed against Israel, along with the Iranian nuclear program and the refusal of Iran to turn over senior al Qaeda operatives in its custody, that caused Washington to limit and eventually curtail dialogue with Tehran on Afghanistan and Iraq.