“Iran” newspaper published an article by Nozar shafiei, an international analyst, on Monday, in which he expressed his belief that the political crisis in Afghanistan has affected all the neighboring countries.
He said that cultural commonalities between Iran and Afghanistan, border exchanges, as well as Iran’s opposition to the presence of US forces in Afghanistan has doubled the impact of Afghanistan’s developments on Iran, Shafiei said.
He said that Iran has been grappling with a wave of Afghan immigrants and shelter-seekers, drug trafficking from Afghanistan as well as border conflicts with its eastern neighbor over the past decades.
All the above-mentioned challenges have raised Iran’s sensitivity about Afghanistan so that it is natural for Tehran to seek the establishment of peace and stability in Afghanistan, the analyst said.
In contrast, countries farther away from Afghanistan are less likely to help resolve the issue fundamentally, especially when those countries are challenging Afghanistan's neighbors, he added.
The United States has both obvious and hidden challenges with a significant portion of Afghanistan's neighbors; From Iran and China to Russia and some Central Asian countries and even Pakistan, Shafiei said, adding that Afghanistan is a place where the US can cause serious inconvenience to these countries by making it insecure.
It is only the passage of time that will show what strategy the Americans are pursuing in the Doha talks, the analyst said.
Therefore, if Iran is defending negotiations with the Taliban, it is first in terms of political realism and secondly in order to address security concerns, because if the distribution of power in Afghanistan fails to provide relative satisfaction to the various forces in Afghanistan, then there will be concern of spreading conflicts to Iran, he added.
Translated by: Ahmad Mohammadi
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