Iran deserves to be part of an Afghanistan solution

 Washingtonpost--In his June 9 op-ed, “Testing the Afghan exit ramps,” David Ignatius rightly asserted the strategic goal to be a regional framework for a post-America Afghanistan: a joint effort by Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and the United States. But he excluded Iran. This astonishing omission disregards centuries-old historical, cultural and linguistic commonalities, the 582-mile Afghanistan-Iran border, the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Iran and a common dominant language. Afghanistan’s mercurial president, Hamid Karzai, reportedly asserted last month that “Afghanistan places greatest trust in Iran,” and he emphasized the two countries’ “cultural commonalities.” A successful strategy cannot ignore these inescapable realities