NEVER STABILIZE AN UNDEMOCRATIC REGION:

Michael Young: There have been suggestions that Iran views the Taliban victory in Afghanistan as a threat. Is this true, and if so in what ways might the situation constitute a threat?

Fatemeh Aman: There are many unknowns about the new generation of the Taliban that has just seized power in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership includes veterans of the 1990s Taliban government as well as much younger figures. The structure of the group is not transparent and is filled with ambiguities. This is, I think, a source of concern for everybody, not just Iran.

In Iran's view, one of the worst-case scenarios has always been for the Islamic State group, which in Afghanistan calls itself the Islamic State-Khorasan or IS-K, to gain power. This would not only threaten Iran's investments in Afghanistan but would also put Iran's eastern borders seriously at risk. Iran may have concluded in 2015, with the emergence of IS-K, that the government of Afghanistan was not strong enough to defeat that threat. This may have prompted Tehran to strengthen its ties with the Taliban as well as make efforts to bring the Taliban and Afghan government together for peace negotiations.

An absolute Taliban government without a power-sharing mechanism has never been in line with Iran's national interests. The Taliban are multifactional and Iran has tried to increase its influence within the group by getting closer to certain factions, but it is still suspicious of the Taliban as a whole. Essentially, a coalition government with Taliban participation would have been a good outcome for Iran. A government ruled just by the Taliban has many unknown aspects and could increase the influence of Iran's Arab rivals in Afghanistan, fuel the civil war in the country, and lead to the growth of other militias.

Iran, China, and Russia benefited from the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the U.S. military's confrontation with the militant groups there, even as they blamed the U.S. presence for the conflict in the country. The United States is now ending its presence and the security vacuum resulting from the troop withdrawal could easily be filled by militant groups and foreign terrorist forces. Interestingly, all these regional players now call the U.S. withdrawal "irresponsible."

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