[243][244]

Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Zbigniew Brzezinski in September 1978
King Khalid of Saudi Arabia and Carter, October 1978
In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf, as well as the existence of Pakistan.[244][246] These concerns led to Carter expanding collaboration between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which began several months earlier when the CIA started providing some $695,000 worth of non-lethal assistance (e.g., "cash, medical equipment, and radio transmitters") to the Afghan mujahideen in July 1979.[247] The modest scope of this early collaboration was likely influenced by the understanding, later recounted by CIA official Robert Gates, "that a substantial U.S. covert aid program" might have "raise[d] the stakes" thereby causing "the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."[246][248]
According to a 2020 review of declassified U.S. documents by Conor Tobin in the journal Diplomatic History: "The primary significance of this small-scale aid was in creating constructive links with dissidents through Pakistan's ISI that could be utilized in the case of an overt Soviet intervention ... 