The Taliban claimed to be enemies of the United States, yet 90 days into the US war against Iran, there is no sign of such hostility.<\/p>\n
Given the Taliban’s claim of years of fighting against the US, it was expected that they would at least take a clear stand alongside Iran in this conflict. However, the group officially declared that it maintains an active neutrality in the war.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Yaqub Mujahid, in a meeting with Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy of Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council in Moscow, stated that Afghan land, airspace, and borders have not been a source of threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Taliban have proven this in the recent war.<\/p>\n
However, fundamentally presenting the issue this way is flawed from the start.<\/p>\n
The Taliban sell their restraint from hostile actions against Iran as a \u201cstrategic asset,\u201d whereas preventing the use of Afghan territory against neighbors is the minimum duty of any legitimate government, not a negotiable privilege.<\/p>\n
The Taliban claim to practice “active neutrality,” but in geopolitical wars, neutrality essentially means siding with the aggressor.<\/p>\n
It is true that the Taliban, as a security organization cooperating and committed to the US, did not enter the Ramadan war against Iran, but the main reason for this is that such a mission was never assigned to them.<\/p>\n
Although they did not directly enter the war, their most significant service to the US against Iran occurred before the conflict: the destruction of Iran\u2019s strategic depth in Afghanistan, which sparked a domino effect leading to further collapses up to Damascus.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan during the republican era, despite its weaknesses and problems, was one of the Islamic Republic of Iran\u2019s most vital spheres of influence. The Persian-speaking communities, as civilizational allies, and the Shia populations, as religious allies, had such influence throughout Afghanistan\u2019s power structures that they neutralized a significant portion of the US\u2019s anti-Iran projects in the region.<\/p>\n
The network of pro-Iran forces, spanning government, parliament, cultural, security, and social institutions, had built capacity to make Afghanistan one of the most important pressure points against the US. Iran consistently controlled at least half of the political power structure and the US-dependent government could not appoint any minister without Tehran\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n
The fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was not only the collapse of a government but the disintegration of one of Iran\u2019s most important strategic depths and the loss of a vast network of cultural, political, religious, and security influence in the eastern Islamic world.<\/p>\n
The service the Taliban rendered to the US was the destruction of all these capacities; capacities that some inside Iran also contributed to undermining by dragging the Islamic Republic into the quagmire of supporting the Taliban, to the extent that alongside key scientific, cultural, and political institutions and prominent Iran-aligned figures, even humanitarian organizations such as the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation were forced to cease operations.<\/p>\n
The truth is that in Iran\u2019s war against the US, Afghanistan should have been, like Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, one of the main centers for striking the invading forces. Neither Iran\u2019s influence in Afghanistan was less than in Iraq, Yemen, or Lebanon, nor was the strength and number of its allies fewer.<\/p>\n
Therefore, if today Afghanistan\u2019s rulers do not stand with Iran in the world\u2019s largest Islamic confrontation with the US, it is a tragedy, not an achievement.<\/p>\n
The main issue is not that the Taliban did not fight against Iran; the issue is that Afghanistan has turned from being a strategic depth of the Islamic Republic into a land whose rulers are unwilling to pay even the smallest price for Iran\u2019s benefit, and they prevent the Afghan people\u2019s support for Iran.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, it is unclear whether, if their mission changes, they would maintain their stance of active neutrality or openly side with the US.<\/p>\n
The true allies of Iran in Afghanistan remain the same as before, not the Taliban; those who, during the republican period, stood with Iran against the US and who, during the war and after the martyrdom of the leader of the ummah, openly declared their support for the Islamic Republic of Iran from Afghanistan to the streets of Iran and various European cities. Meanwhile, the Taliban have adopted a policy of “active neutrality”\u2014effectively soft alignment with the US.<\/p>\n
Seyyed Ahmad Mousavi, Missionary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Analysis of the Taliban’s stance in the Iran-US conflict, highlighting their claimed neutrality and the strategic loss for Iran in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,10,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-opinion","category-top-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}