Foreign Policy: Why were the American-trained Afghan commandos forced to flee to Iran?

Foreign Policy has published a new report to the US Congress in which a lawmaker warns that closely-guarded secrets about US special operators could fall into the hands of Tehran after thousands of Afghan military personnel were forced out following the collapse of the Afghan government - including a number of elite Afghan special forces. (The commandos) who were trained in the United States - to flee to Iran.

The plight of the commandos forced to flee to Iran is one of many revelations revealed in a congressional investigation by a top Republican lawmaker in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan and the chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Kabul, where the Taliban have taken control of the country. For about a year.

The report by Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, portrayed the State Department at the time as unprepared for the rapid collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021, and ill-equipped to help manage massive air evacuations in the ensuing chaos.

Commandos who have fled to Iran are likely to pass on their institutional knowledge of sensitive US military information—including special forces tactics and sensitive intelligence gathering—to the Iranian government, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

According to the 120-page McCaul report released Tuesday, four current and former U.S. officials confirmed the details of the report on the Afghan private operators, and agreed with the report's conclusions that the commandos who fled to Iran were likely to pass on their institutional knowledge of sensitive U.S. military information — Including Special Forces tactics and sensitive intelligence gathering—to the Iranian government, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

The report concluded that the Afghan military and commandos that fled to Iran were forced to do so after the United States had actually abandoned them, and said that the administration of US President Joe Biden had not made a decision yet on whether to launch a new campaign to try to evacuate any Afghan commandos still in Afghanistan.