As Nooruddin Azizi, the Taliban’s Minister of Industry and Trade, visits Iran for economic talks, an Iranian lawmaker has conditioned any border and transit cooperation on the Taliban fulfilling Iran\u2019s water rights from the Helmand River.<\/p>\n
Farhad Shahraki, a representative from Sistan province, wrote on the social media platform X that the continuation and sustainability of trade and development relations with Afghanistan depend on the full implementation of Iran\u2019s legal rights to water from the Helmand River. According to him, this issue forms the basis of any bilateral economic and transit cooperation.<\/p>\n
Iran has for years faced a severe drought and declining water resources. In recent years, it has repeatedly urged the Taliban administration to honor its commitments on the sharing of Helmand River water. Recently, Iran\u2019s Deputy Foreign Minister also requested the release of stored water from Salma Dam in Herat province to Iranian territory during a meeting with a senior Taliban official.<\/p>\n
The Taliban trade minister’s visit to Iran comes just days after Pakistan imposed new transit restrictions on Afghanistan. In response, Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban\u2019s deputy economic chief, has been tasked with exploring alternative trade routes, particularly via Iran\u2019s ports.<\/p>\n
While the Taliban seek to establish new trade relations\u2014especially with Iran\u2014Afghan authorities’ failure to fulfill their water-sharing commitments has sparked criticism and skepticism among Iranian officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran conditions trade with Taliban on Helmand River water rights amid worsening drought and diplomatic tensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","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=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}