Taking a swipe at the Taliban’s newly-announced interim government of terrorists and criminals, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency critiqued: “The Taliban … have repeatedly alleged they would form an inclusive government.” Given the Taliban’s current approach to governance, experts in Tehran at the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, that advises Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warn “relations between Iran and the Taliban or the government formed by the Taliban will not be amicable.” During July and August, as Iran’s executive branch transitioned from the presidency of Hassan Rouhani to that of Ebrahim Raisi, the government in Tehran began adapting to new realities on its eastern front. After two decades, the US can no longer use Afghanistan to strike Iran but the restoration of Taliban rule there does not bode well either. In the estimation of many in Tehran’s government and most of the Iranian public, takfīrīs or militant Sunni extremists are controlling Afghanistan again. It is not just the Taliban that Iran finds troubling but also the new Afghan regime’s longstanding partner Al-Qaida plus units of Da‘ish or the Islamic State—two more terrorist groups with which Iran has clashed—that have begun entrenching in Iran’s eastern neighbor. So, Iran is working to safeguard its internal security and regional influence.
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