Iran and Afghanistan: Rivals, Neighbours, Partners
Iran and Afghanistan: Rivals, Neighbours, Partners
Few countries across the wider Central Asian and Middle Eastern region have attracted as much international attention in recent years as Iran and Afghanistan. Both have become increasingly isolated from much of the Western-led international system, albeit for very different reasons. Yet despite their shared position on its margins, the two countries are far from natural allies. Their relationship has instead been shaped by more than four decades of ideological rivalry, security concerns, economic interdependence and, above all, geographic necessity.
These countries share more than a 900-kilometre border and increasingly find themselves operating on the margins of the Western-led international order. It would nevertheless be misleading to describe their relationship, as it is often portrayed in Western media, as a natural partnership between two supposedly “pariah” states. Few bilateral relationships in the region have been shaped by such a complicated mixture of ideological hostility, cultural proximity, economic interdependence and strategic necessity. For Tehran, Afghanistan has at different times been a buffer, a source of instability, an economic hinterland, an ideological battleground and a theatre of competition with rival regional and global powers.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran’s Afghanistan policy has rested on several overlapping interests. Tehran has sought to protect the Islamic Republic and, particularly in the early revolutionary period, extend its ideological influence; limit the presence of the United States and rival Sunni powers in its immediate neighbourhood; maintain economic influence in Afghanistan; and, perhaps most consistently, prevent its eastern neighbour from descending into a level of instability that could threaten Iran itself. These objectives have not always been compatible. The result has been an Afghanistan policy characterised less by ideological consistency than by persistent pragmatism.
The relationship took its modern form amid the upheavals of the late 1970s. Iran’s Islamic Revolution coincided almost exactly with Afghanistan’s descent into political turmoil and, eventually, the Soviet intervention. Although the new Iranian leadership was preoccupied with consolidating the revolution and subsequently fighting the Iran-Iraq War, Afghanistan quickly became important to Tehran. Iran provided refuge to large numbers of Afghans and developed extensive political and social networks among Afghan communities. It also supported Shia groups resisting the Afghan communist government and the Soviet presence, using clerical networks, state institutions and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Initially, much of this support was directed towards Twelver Shia communities in central Afghanistan, particularly the Hazaras. But Tehran gradually broadened its approach. By the late 1980s, Iran was actively encouraging greater coordination between Afghanistan’s fragmented Shia factions and supported the formation of Hezb-e Wahdat in 1989. At the same time, Iranian policymakers increasingly recognised that influence in Afghanistan could not be built through sectarian politics alone. Tehran expanded contacts with Dari-speaking Sunni and non-Pashtun groups, exploiting the linguistic and cultural connections linking Iran with western, central and northern Afghanistan.
The collapse of Afghanistan’s communist government in 1992 opened a new phase. Iran supported the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani as well as Shia and non-Pashtun factions, but Afghanistan’s rapidly intensifying civil war forced Tehran into increasingly pragmatic manoeuvring. Iranian officials even established contacts with Sunni Pashtun Islamist actors such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. For Tehran, the objective was no longer simply the empowerment of Afghan Shias. It was the creation of a political order in Kabul in which Iran-friendly forces would have meaningful representation and in which Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other regional competitors would not exercise dominant influence.
The rise of the Taliban fundamentally altered this calculation. Their strongly anti-Shia ideology, treatment of the Hazara population and hostility towards several Iranian-backed factions transformed the movement into a direct security concern for Tehran. Iran consequently became one of the most important external supporters of the anti-Taliban forces that eventually formed the Northern Alliance. The killing of Hezb-e Wahdat leader Abdul Ali Mazari after his capture by the Taliban deepened the confrontation, while the later killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif brought the two sides dangerously close to interstate war. Iran massed around 200,000 troops near the Afghan border, although President Mohammad Khatami’s government ultimately chose not to intervene militarily.
Even at the height of this confrontation, however, Iranian policy remained dual-track. Tehran armed and supported forces fighting the Taliban while simultaneously participating in diplomatic initiatives aimed at producing a negotiated settlement. Iran supported the UN-backed peace process, the 6+2 format involving Afghanistan’s neighbours and major powers, and other diplomatic efforts seeking a broader and more inclusive Afghan government. This combination of military hedging and diplomatic engagement would become a recurring feature of Iran’s Afghanistan policy.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 produced one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of Iranian-American relations. Iran and the United States suddenly shared an immediate objective: removing the Taliban government and weakening al-Qaeda. Tehran provided political, intelligence and logistical assistance during the campaign against the Taliban and played a constructive role in efforts to establish a new, multi-ethnic Afghan political order. Several figures with long-standing ties to Iran gained positions in the emerging Afghan system, while Tehran developed a relatively close relationship with President Hamid Karzai. The cooperation did not last. President George W. Bush’s decision to include Iran in the “axis of evil” in January 2002 helped extinguish hopes in Tehran that cooperation over Afghanistan might lead to a wider rapprochement with Washington. Yet Iran did not abandon the post-Taliban Afghan state. Instead, it became an important contributor to reconstruction, particularly in western Afghanistan and other areas within its traditional geographic and cultural sphere of influence.
Iran invested in roads, infrastructure, agriculture and communications while promoting bilateral trade. It simultaneously developed a substantial soft-power presence through educational institutions, media outlets, religious organisations, healthcare projects and assistance to Shia communities. A succession of bilateral agreements expanded cooperation in trade, security and agriculture. Iran also sought to integrate Afghanistan into transport networks running through Iranian territory. The development of Chabahar port became particularly important in this respect, offering landlocked Afghanistan potential access to the Indian Ocean while reducing its dependence on Pakistani transit routes.
Yet the deeper contradiction in Iranian policy remained unresolved. Tehran wanted a stable Afghan state, but it did not want that stability to rest on a long-term American military presence immediately beyond Iran’s eastern border. Iran therefore welcomed the removal of the Taliban and the campaign against al-Qaeda while regarding the expansion and permanence of the US and NATO presence with growing suspicion. Relations became more complicated after the disputed 2009 Afghan presidential election and particularly as Kabul’s strategic partnership with Washington developed. Tehran increasingly sought to preserve relationships across Afghanistan’s political spectrum rather than placing all its bets on the central government.
This apparent contradiction was in fact the essence of Iranian strategy. Tehran cultivated governments while maintaining links with opposition forces; supported reconstruction while building networks capable of protecting its influence if the political system collapsed; opposed Sunni extremism while remaining willing to communicate with actors it regarded as ideological adversaries. Afghanistan was simply too important for Iran to pursue a policy based on ideological purity.
The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 therefore reopened an old dilemma rather than creating an entirely new one. Iran and the Taliban carry a history of profound distrust, tension and, at times, near-open confrontation. But they are also condemned by geography to deal with one another. Iran cannot insulate itself from developments across its eastern border, while Afghanistan cannot easily ignore one of its most important neighbours, trading partners and potential transit routes. The history of their bilateral relationship suggests that shared international isolation alone will never be enough to make Tehran and Kabul natural allies. What it can do is reinforce something that has shaped their relationship for more than four decades: the recognition that however uncomfortable coexistence may be, neither side can afford simply to ignore the other.
Author: Blanka Benkő-Kovács, advisor - LCTS, LUPS
Image source: aljazeera.com