Geopolitics: Iran And The Taliban -- This Is 3-D Chess, Not Checkers Or Dominoes -- August 17, 2021

From Bloomberg, July 11, 2021:

Sometimes, the enemy of an enemy is an even greater enemy. For Iran, the humiliation of the U.S. in Afghanistan brings to the fore a fiercer foe. If the threat from the Taliban is not as existential to the Islamic Republic as the military presence of its most powerful adversary, the triumphant militia nonetheless poses a grave danger at an especially inconvenient moment. 

Although Iran has stepped up its diplomatic outreach to the Taliban, the government of incoming President Ebrahim Raisi, facing growing discontent at home amid fading hopes of quick economic relief from the West, must now reckon with renewed perils in the east. The Taliban may have no interest in bringing down the Iranian regime, but its ascendancy in the Afghan civil war is sure to send fresh waves of refugees flooding across the 900-kilometer (560-mile) border between the countries, accompanied by a spike in drug and human trafficking, as well as increased terrorist activity. 

It also endangers trade, which sanctions-shackled Iran can ill afford, and jeopardizes an ambitious railway project that would channel Afghan exports to Iranian ports, and thence to the wider world.

So any sense of schadenfreude in Tehran over President Joe Biden’s attempts to rationalize the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will have been stifled by the alarming news that the Taliban has taken control of Islam Qala, a key border post between the two countries. Reports from the area say Afghan security forces and customs officials fled to the Iranian side when the militia arrived.

Islam Qala is not only an important crossing point for bilateral trade, it is also the gateway to the Afghan city of Herat, the location of a large Iranian consulate. In 1998, militiamen allied with the Taliban slaughtered 11 Iranians there, including nine diplomats, bringing the two countries to within a whisker of war. 

Much more at the link. 

And this link, also, or if you can't get past the paywall: (graphic pending)

 

Sometimes it takes a one-term president to do something no predecessor was able to accomplish. To paraphrase a former SecState: what does it matter now?