Kabul ? President Hamid Karzai is increasingly isolated and has surrounded himself with an inner circle of advisers who are urging him to move closer to Iran and Pakistan as the U.S. draws down its role in Afghanistan, several friends and aides tell The Associated Press.

Their advice is echoed in Karzai’s anti-West rhetoric, which has heightened both in his public speeches and in private. He met recently with Iran’s defense minister, and constantly cautions against trusting the U.S. to have Afghanistan’s best interests at heart.

Several of Karzai’s close friends and advisers now speak of a president whose doors have closed to all but one narrow faction and who refuses to listen to dissenting opinions. They say people allowed to see the president are vetted by an inner circle of religious conservatives who belong to a nonviolent wing of Hizb-i-Islami, a radical Islamic group whose relentless attacks on American soldiers forced the U.S. to withdraw from bases in northeastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces.

The group’s leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was once an American ally but has since been declared a terrorist by the United States.

Although Hekmatyar shares the Taliban’s goal of an Islamic regime, his men have also fought Taliban militants over the past year, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is said to despise him. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Hekmatyar spent five years in exile in Iran.

Inside Afghanistan’s presidential palace, Iran, Pakistan and China are most often referred to as reliable allies, according to Karzai’s friends and advisers. Last year, Karzai openly acknowledged taking “bags” of money from Iran to finance his administration.

“A lot of Afghans are very concerned about the direction the country is taking, moving away from the international community … toward a more conservative practice in which the religious people and warlords have more power,” Human Rights of Afghanistan Commissioner Nader Nadery said.

“Consistently his aides are pushing him toward Iran and Pakistan,” Nadery said. “All those who are managing and controlling his schedule, providing appointments, all see the advantages of breaking with the international community.”

Karzai seemed to go out of his way to snub the United States in the days leading up to President Barack Obama’s address Wednesday announcing an initial withdrawal of 30,000 U.S. soldiers by next summer.

He stood shoulder to shoulder this week with Ahmad Vahidi, the first Iranian defense minister to visit Afghanistan since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. He also announced he would attend an anti-terrorism conference in Tehran later this month, while at the same time questioning the sincerity of U.S. and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.

“His timing is confusing,” Nadery said. “It is not wise for a politician to come out with such statements at a time when the troop contribution to Afghanistan is being hotly debated in Washington.”

One adviser whose friendship with Karzai spans decades said he had consistently warned the president against engaging in public battles with the United States, urging closed-door diplomacy instead.

Six months ago, he says an angry Karzai called him to the presidential palace.

“The president said, ‘You are always saying be careful, be careful, telling me what is wrong.’ And then he told me to never call him again. And since then I have not been able to see him and I am still an ‘adviser,”‘ he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he says he still values his friendship with Karzai. “He will always be my friend but I am worried about him.”