Turan Research Center

On February 15, 2026, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Radio Iran's Pashto service that Kabul would be prepared to cooperate with the Islamic Republic in the event of a U.S. military attack — if Tehran formally requested assistance. He added that Iran had emerged victorious from its June 2025 war with Israel and would prevail again against Washington. The statement was extraordinary on its face: the world's most prominent Sunni jihadist movement publicly offering military solidarity to a Shia theocracy it once nearly went to war with. Yet the declaration was less a rupture than a culmination — the latest expression of a pragmatic alignment that has been deepening for over a decade, driven not by ideological convergence but by shared adversaries, mutual dependence, and the strategic logic of survival under pressure.

Iran’s engagement with the Taliban has evolved from tactical coordination during the insurgency to a pragmatic working relationship since the group’s return to power in August 2021. Despite deep ideological differences and a history of confrontation, Tehran has prioritized strategic interests over sectarian or doctrinal considerations. This relationship has yielded tangible benefits for both sides, while remaining transactional, asymmetric, and subject to significant constraints.

Origins of Tactical Cooperation

Evidence of Iran–Taliban engagement surfaced publicly in May 2016, when a a U.S. drone strike killed Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour then leader of the Taliban near the Iranian-Pakistani border. U.S. Intelligence agencies later indicated that Mansour had been returning from Iran. At the time, Mansour was widely regardedas the Taliban’s arms and narcotics czar, overseeing the group’s finances and transnational networks. According to the U.S. intelligence assessment, his trip to Iran was intended to facilitate tactical coordination. Mansour’s assassination publicly exposed the depth of Iran-Taliban engagement in the context of their shared opposition to Western influence in Afghanistan.

Subsequent developments reinforced these assessments. In October 2017, the Taliban launched a large-scale offensive on Farah City, the capital of Farah Province bordering Iran, effectively besieging the city until U.S. air support enabled Afghan forces to repel the offensive. Afghan security officials later Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, acting through Taliban proxies. The Taliban again demonstrated increased operational capacity in Farah Province in 2018, briefly capturing parts of the provincial capital.

This episode underscored Iran’s willingness to engage the Taliban as a means of countering U.S. and Western influence in Afghanistan, even as ideological tensions persisted.

Historical Background: Ideological Hostility and Early Confrontation

The relationship between Iran and the Taliban has been shaped by deep sectarian, ideological, and geopolitical divides. The Taliban's rise in the mid-1990s as a Pashtun-dominated, ultra-conservative Sunni movement — backed primarily by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — directly challenged Iran's interests. Tehran viewed the group as an ideological rival aligned with its regional adversaries, hostile to Shia communities, and threatening to create an unstable, anti-Iranian regime on its eastern border. The Taliban's persecution of the Shia Hazara minority and its disruption of Iranian influence routes into Central Asia further heightened tensions.

Unlike Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which recognized the Taliban regime that came to power in 1996, Iran refused to do so and instead provided military, financial, and logistical support to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance (United Islamic Front). Qasem Soleimani, who assumed command of the IRGC Quds Force around 1998, played a central role in this effort, advocating for intensified proxy support — including arms shipments, training, intelligence, and operational coordination — to sustain Northern Alliance resistance without risking direct Iranian military confrontation. This approach allowed Iran to counter the Taliban at lower cost while preserving regional leverage.

Relations reached their nadir in August 1998 when Taliban forces overran the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, killing eight to eleven Iranian diplomats and a journalist, and carried out large-scale massacres of Hazara civilians. Iran mobilized some 200,000 troops along the Afghan border, and war was averted only through UN mediation and diplomatic pressure. The episode reinforced Iran's view of the Taliban as an existential regional threat, while also illustrating a pattern that would define future engagement: despite their ideological extremism, Taliban leaders have repeatedly shown a readiness to accept tactical support from former adversaries and ideologically distant powers — including Iran, Russia, and China — when it serves their goals of survival, reducing isolation, and consolidating power.

Following the U.S.-led intervention in late 2001, Iran initially cooperated with Washington, providing intelligence support and facilitating the Bonn process for forming a new Afghan government. However, as the U.S. and NATO presence became a long-term fixture perceived as encirclement, elements of the IRGC shifted to a hedging strategy. While maintaining ties with the Kabul government, Iran began offering limited tactical support — weapons, training, and safe passage — to Taliban insurgents fighting coalition forces. The Taliban pragmatically accepted such assistance despite doctrinal differences, prioritizing battlefield gains and diplomatic breathing room over ideological consistency.

Cultivating Influence Across Ideological Lines

Iran’s approach was notable for its focus on cultivating relationships with senior Taliban figures associated with the movement’s Kandahar-based leadership, traditionally regarded as its most doctrinaire faction.

According to reporting by the Rand Corporation, the IRGC concentrated its engagement with the Taliban in the border provinces of Farah, Nimruz, and Herat. Iran invested heavily in cultivating relationships with Key Taliban leaders who today occupy senior positions within the regime, including Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir (Deputy Minister of Defense), Mohammad Ibrahim Sadar (Deputy Minister of Interior), and Mullah Mohammad Shirin Akhund (Governor of Kandahar Province). All three are considered close associates of the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hebatullah Akhundzada.

Iran’s success in building durable ties with this faction reflects a strategic calculation that influence over core leadership networks would yield greater long-term leverage than outreach to peripheral or more pragmatic elements.

Engagement After the Fall of Kabul

Iran openly welcomed the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. Unlike most foreign missions, Iran kept its embassy and consulate in Herat operational after the Taliban took Kabul. Iranian officials publicly framed the U.S, withdrawal as an opportunity for regional stabilization and peace.

In February 2023, Iran became the second neighboring country after Pakistan to formally hand over the Afghan embassy to Taliban representatives. Although relations experienced periodic tensions — particularly over border incidents, water rights, and the refugee crisis — Tehran has consistently avoided steps that would fundamentally alienate the Taliban, a posture largely reciprocated by Kabul.

High-level exchanges continued throughout 2023 and beyond, with Taliban delegations visiting Tehran, and Iranian officials travelling to Kabul. To date, Tehran has derived tangible benefits from this relationship, particularly in the areas of trade, border security, and intelligence cooperation against ISIS-K and other militant groups. The Taliban, in turn, have benefited from Iran’s political engagement, diplomatic legitimacy, and economic access — most notably through full use of Iran’s Chabahar port.

Trade, Leverage, and Strategic Opportunity

Sanctions have pushed both Tehran and the Taliban into a shared strategic corner. Isolated financially and diplomatically, both actors are now incentivized to innovate methods of evasion. For the Taliban, the objective is straightforward: survival and regime consolidation. For Tehran, however, Afghanistan represents something more strategic — a relatively under-monitored space where it can quietly advance regional ambitions.

A recent report by Israel’s Channel 14 suggests that this convergence may be deepening. Tehran is allegedly building a covert network through Taliban channels to facilitate financial transfers to Hezbollah and to establish contingency escape routes for senior Iranian officials in the event of a major military confrontation with the United States or Israel.

The alleged involvement of Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian-Fard, an experienced IRGC-QF operative with deep familiarity in Afghanistan, indicates that this initiative may be structured and strategic rather than opportunistic. The reported participation of Kamaluddin Nabizada, an Afghan businessman already sanctioned by Washington for facilitating IRGC and Hezbollah financial operations, further underscores the sanctions-evasion dimension.

Channel 14 has since reported an additional dimension to this relationship. According to senior Iran analyst Dror Balazada, the regime covertly dispatched Nabizada — already facing corruption charges — to approach the Taliban about assisting Tehran in suppressing internal uprisings. The Taliban leader reportedly refused, instead demanding a formal request from Tehran. The episode is revealing on multiple levels: it illustrates the regime's growing desperation over domestic unrest, its willingness to seek help from an ideologically alien partner, and the limits of its leverage over Kabul. The Taliban's insistence on a formal request suggests a movement increasingly conscious of its bargaining position — willing to cooperate, but not to be instrumentalized quietly.

If substantiated, these developments would illustrate how sanctioned actors increasingly cooperate not out of ideological alignment alone, but out of shared necessity — reshaping Afghanistan into a potential logistical rear base for Iran’s regional security architecture.

Economic engagement has become a central pillar of Iran’s Taliban policy. As Taliban–Pakistan relations deteriorated over disputes related to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and border management, Tehran moved to position itself as Afghanistan’s primary economic partner.

During his November 2025 visit to Kabul, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi announced that bilateral trade between Iran and Afghanistan had surpassed Iran’s total trade volume with all European countries combined. For Iran, which remains under extensive international sanctions, Afghanistan offers a nearby and relatively accessible market for oil, industrial goods, and manufactured products.

The increasing use of Iran’s Chabahar port as Afghanistan’s primary maritime outlet — displacing Karachi — has further deepened Kabul’s economic dependence on Tehran. The shift has enhanced Iran’s structural leverage over the Taliban, particularly at a time when normalization with Pakistan appears unlikely.

Constraints and Frictions

Despite these gains, Iran’s influence over the Taliban remains limited. Tehran recognizes that distancing itself from the Taliban would create opportunities for rival regional actors. Nevertheless, its efforts to position itself as a mediator between the Taliban and Afghan opposition groups have met resistance. The Taliban recently declined to participate in a regional dialogue hosted in Tehran, underscoring the limits of Iranian diplomatic leverage.

Water security remains another major point of friction. The Taliban’s continued construction of dams on rivers flowing toward Iran’s arid eastern provinces has triggered public outrage among Iranian parliamentarians and analysts. Farhad Shahraki and Ahmad Bakhshayesh Urdestani, prominent Iranian MPs, denounced the Taliban’s water policy and questioned the Iranian government’s complacency while calling for the use of force to ensure Iran’s fair water share. However, official Tehran has largely downplayed the issue to avoid escalating tensions with Kabul.

Security cooperation has helped stabilize much of Iran’s eastern border, but vulnerabilities persist. ISIS-K, Jaysh al-Adl, narcotics trafficking, and irregular migration remain enduring challenges. These shared threats continue to incentivize tactical coordination between Tehran and Kabul.

Afghan Opposition Figures and Growing Concerns

Iran continues to host several prominent Afghan political and military figures opposed to the Taliban, including former Herat governor Mohammad Ismail Khan and Shiite Hazara leader Mohammad Mohaqiq. Iran is also home to large numbers of former Afghan National Security Forces personnel.

However, Iran’s deportation of undocumented Afghan refugees has raised concerns among opposition figures. According to a UN report, 1.8 million Afghans were deported from Iran in 2025. Most of these deportations took place around the 12-Day War, with Iranian officials accusing some Afghan refugees of spying for Israel.These mass deportations followed a previous crackdown, in which Afghan refugees were blamed for social disorder, representing a security threat, and increasing unemployment among. Reports suggest that some former Afghan security personnel have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan and subsequently detained or killed. In August 2025, The Telegraph reported that the IRGC is cooperating with Taliban intelligence to identify and track Afghan nationals who assisted the United Kingdom.

Concerns intensified following the assassinations of two prominent anti-Taliban figures in Iran in 2025. In September, Maroof Ghulami, head of the Council of Jihadi Commanders in western Afghanistan and a close associate of Ismail Khan, was killed in his office in Mashhad. In December, General Ikramuddin Saree, a former senior police general and outspoken Taliban critic, was shot dead near his home in Tehran.

Opposition groups such as the National Resistance Front (NRF) swiftly blamed the Taliban for the latter attack. Leaders of both the NRF and the Afghanistan Freedom Front called on Iranian authorities to conduct a transparent investigation. Iranian authorities issued limited public responses, and no findings have been released. For many Afghan opposition figures, such developments signal that Iran.

Conclusion: Iranian Goals, Influence, and Mutual Utility

Iran’s policy toward the Taliban is driven primarily by strategic considerations. Tehran seeks to prevent renewed U.S. or hostile regional influence in Afghanistan, secure its eastern borders, counter ISIS-K, manage refugee flows, ensure access to water resources, and expand economic leverage under sanctions. Engagement with the Taliban has proven more effective in advancing these objectives than confrontation.

Iran’s influence is substantial but not decisive. It is strongest in economic interdependence, border security coordination, intelligence cooperation, and selective political legitimacy. However, Tehran lacks the ability to fundamentally shape Taliban governance or compel concessions on sensitive issues such as water rights, internal repression, or engagement with opposition groups.

For the Taliban, the relationship offers diplomatic recognition, economic lifelines, trade access, and a powerful regional patron capable of balancing Pakistan. Yet this engagement also deepens Kabul’s dependence on Tehran and constrains the Taliban’s strategic autonomy.

Ultimately, Iran–Taliban relations reflect a pragmatic alignment driven by converging interests rather than trust or ideological convergence. While mutually beneficial in the short term, the relationship remains fragile, transactional, and vulnerable to shifting regional dynamics.

Hussain Ehsani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center. He previously was a senior researcher at the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Tehran.
Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center, a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, and a Research Fellow at Bar Ilan University's Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.