If the signed memorandum of understanding between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States leads to a comprehensive and lasting agreement, the consequences would extend far beyond a bilateral reset. They would ripple across numerous regional and international files, including Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Afghanistan has no seat at the negotiating table, yet any shift in the quality of that relationship would inevitably affect the Taliban regime, whether by design or not. The key question, therefore, is this: would an Iran-U.S. rapprochement open doors for the Taliban, or would it generate new pressures?
It is worth recalling that the Taliban rose to power at a time when relations between the Islamic Republic and the United States remained deeply hostile, and both sides viewed Afghanistan through the lens of regional and extra-regional competition. In that environment, it was natural for the Taliban to exploit the rift between these two global and regional actors. If they now reconcile, the Taliban’s strategic value to both would diminish considerably. In conditions of open hostility, every power tends to be acutely sensitive to developments in the countries bordering its rivals. Afghanistan, sharing a long border with Iran, has at times occupied a particular place in Washington’s security calculations. Even if Washington had no intention of using the Taliban against Tehran, the mere existence of a regime on Iran’s eastern flank that lay outside Tehran’s orbit functioned as a potential lever of pressure against the Islamic Republic. Once Iran and the United States reconcile, this dynamic largely loses its relevance. The White House would have little reason to sustain and expand communication channels with the Taliban for the purpose of containing Iran. In other words, the Taliban would forfeit much of their former importance to Washington, no longer being defined in terms of competition with Tehran.
On the other side of the equation, Tehran has consistently avoided confrontation with the Taliban, concerned that Afghanistan under their rule might become a sphere of influence for regional and extra-regional rivals. Under conditions of tension with the United States, Tehran operated on the assumption that applying pressure on the Taliban could push the group toward closer cooperation with competing actors. Iran’s tolerance of the Taliban has therefore rested on a logic of “tension management” and preventing Afghanistan from becoming a new front against it. Here again, should Iran and the United States reconcile, this calculus would be substantially weakened. Tehran would no longer need to offer the Taliban concessions to keep them at a distance from Washington. Just as the Taliban would lose their utility for the United States, they would lose it for the Islamic Republic as well.
There is yet another dimension through which an Iran-U.S. rapprochement would pose a challenge to the Taliban: the prospect of a rising regional and international standing for the Islamic Republic. If the initial understanding between the two countries truly matures into a comprehensive and lasting agreement, if sanctions on Iran are lifted as a result, and if Iran’s economy and trade are integrated into the global system with European and American markets opening up to it, Tehran would find itself in a fundamentally different position than it occupies today. Iran’s current economic engagement with the Taliban is a product of compulsion and the constraints imposed by sanctions. In a scenario where sanctions are lifted and Iran is reintegrated into global trade, the country’s economic and commercial priorities would shift accordingly. European, American, and other major global markets would be far more attractive and profitable than the limited, high-risk market of Afghanistan. As a result, one of the Taliban’s most significant points of leverage in their dealings with Tehran would erode.
The same logic would apply in the political dimension. An Iran with normalized relations with the West, enjoying broad access to international markets and institutions, would operate with considerably greater confidence and maneuverability in regional affairs. Such a country would feel far less compelled to accommodate the Taliban. On the contrary, it might acquire new tools to apply pressure on them. Moreover, Tehran’s constraints regarding engagement with Taliban opponents would diminish. In a scenario of improved international standing, Iran would host a broader range of Afghan political figures and factions and would deploy various instruments to influence the political landscape in Afghanistan.
Beyond what has been outlined, the mere resolution of regional and international crises would itself pose a challenge to the Taliban. The group has benefited not only from the stagnation of domestic conditions and the weakness of its opponents but also from the cumulative weight of crises beyond Afghanistan’s borders: the war in Ukraine, the Gaza crisis, the conflict in Lebanon, the military exchanges between Israel, the United States, and Iran, and intensifying great power rivalry. The net result has been Afghanistan’s drift to the margins of global attention. In that environment, critical issues such as the formation of an inclusive government and the protection of human rights, particularly women’s rights, fell off the international agenda. Not because they had been resolved, but because more immediate and costly crises had emerged elsewhere. In this sense, the Taliban benefited enormously from global fatigue and the concentration of crises in other arenas. When those extra-Afghan crises subside, the country’s file may shift from a forgotten matter to an unresolved international problem, which is a prospect the Taliban would find deeply unwelcome.
That said, the opposite scenario is also conceivable: that a U.S.-Iran rapprochement leads not to increased pressure on the Taliban but to greater accommodation of the group. One reason for this lies in a shared disposition between the Donald Trump administration and the Islamic Republic: indifference toward democracy and human rights. Accordingly, Trump’s foreign policy toward Afghanistan rests more on pragmatic cost-benefit calculations than on any commitment to promoting liberal democratic values. In such an approach, the nature and character of political regimes, or the degree to which they conform to liberal democratic norms, matters far less than what Trump and his circle actually want. From this perspective, the Taliban now confront a U.S. administration that, unlike its predecessors, places little emphasis on rebuilding a democratic order in Afghanistan. On the other side, the Islamic Republic has shown little interest in altering the current state of affairs in Afghanistan either. It occasionally speaks of the need for broad ethnic participation in governance, but in practice, it has consistently preferred engagement with the ruling regime over any genuine effort to change existing conditions. As a result, there is a real possibility that a limited form of convergence could take shape between Tehran and Washington: not one based on support for the Taliban, but on acceptance of the Taliban as an established reality, on the argument that no practical alternative to the group currently exists and that maintaining the status quo is preferable to another round of war and collapse. This reading is reinforced by conditions on the ground: the Taliban’s firm control over the country’s territory and the near-total absence of any meaningful opposition from the political scene.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
