EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Boasting an almost 1,000-kilometer border with Iran and a history of troubled relations between the Iranians and Sunni Muslim militants, including the Taliban, Afghanistan could become a bellwether for the future of the rivalry between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia.
Had the US withdrawn from Afghanistan several years earlier than it did, chances are that Saudi Arabia would have sought to exploit military advances by the Taliban in far less subtle ways than it may do now.
Saudi Arabia was still channeling funds in 2017 to anti-Iranian, anti-Shiite militants in the Iranian-Afghan-Pakistani border triangle and further south on the Pakistani side of the frontier despite Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s efforts to distance the kingdom from identification with austere interpretations of Islam that shaped the country’s history and that it shared with the Taliban.
“The Taliban is a religious extremist group which is no stranger to extremism and murder, especially murdering Shiites, and its hands are stained with the blood of our diplomats,” noted an Iranian cleric, referring to the 1998 killing of eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist in Afghanistan.
Outgoing Iranian FM Muhammad Javad Zarif outlined the potential tripwire Afghanistan constitutes for Iran.
“If Iran doesn’t play well and makes an enemy out of the Taliban soon, I think some Arab countries in the Persian Gulf and the US would attempt to finance and direct the Taliban to weaken Tehran and divert its attention away from Iraq and other Arab countries. The biggest threat for us would be the formation of an anti-Iran political system in Afghanistan,” Zarif said.
It is tempting to compare the potential problems for Iran of an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban or a neighboring country at war with itself to Saudi Arabia’s Houthi troubles in Yemen. Saudi Arabia was, before the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban’s control of the country. At the time, it saw virtue in stirring the pot on Iran’s borders.