In June 2014, when Islamic State started to spread out across Iraq, a high-ranking Kurdish commander on the front lines told me, despairingly, "We could crush them in two weeks, but no one has an interest in doing it." When he went into details about all the parties who had an interest in ISIS gaining power, the US was the most surprising.
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"The Obama administration wants to bolster the impression that Iran is a moderate force in the Middle East," the Kurdish commander explained. "The Americans want to move closer to Iran, which means it will be able to present itself as a partner in the war against Sunni terrorism. Washington will have an excuse to portray Iran as an entity with whom they can and should be in dialogue."
A year later, the nuclear deal with Iran was signed.
Has the current Democratic administration decided to abandon Afghanistan to the radical Sunni Islamist gangs, the "Taliban," so that Iran can once again be seen as an entity to count on in the shared battle against "radical terrorism"? Is the American withdrawal designed to pave the way to a renewed nuclear deal? Or worse, won't the Taliban regime in Afghanistan strengthen the Iranian claim that Tehran must arm itself with nuclear weapons against security threats on all sides?
In an attempt to play down the power of the images of the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, US President Joe Biden explained that even if US troops had remained in Afghanistan, the situation there wouldn't have changed. Biden inherited the "peace deal" with the Taliban from former President Trump, and it gave him the framework to pull out US forces (even though the Taliban didn't honor most of the deal from the moment it was signed), but this also gives rise to bothersome questions – which did the American administration insist on carrying out the withdrawal at this particular time, and such an embarrassing fashion? How does the "Vietnam exit" from Kabul serve American interests in the international arena?
For Tehran, this was a gift from heaven, and the timing couldn't have been better: images of American military forces fleeing, defeated, from a Muslim state are a wonderful incentive for Iran's policy of expansion, even if the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan could bolster the anti-Iran axis in the Middle East. After all, the Taliban are radical Sunnis, who used to be supported by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Today, now that the Emiratis and the Saudis have distanced themselves from the forces of radical Islam, the Taliban's right-hand man is the emirate Qatar, a backbone of the Muslim Brotherhood and an ally of Iran.
But in the Middle East, interests change like shifting sands. The Iranians, as always and in total contrast to the Americans, know how to pull out at the right time. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Iranians held secret meetings with the Americans and handed over intelligence about the Taliban. They wanted to bring them down. In recent years, the Iranians have asked the Taliban to attack American targets in Afghanistan. This time, they wanted to speed up the American withdrawal from their neighboring country. Now the Iranians are ready to use the Taliban to do their bidding, and mostly to persuade the west that given the renewed threat from Afghanistan, Tehran is an ally with whom they should talk and form ties.
It's not impossible that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is part of the Democratic administration's plan to move closer to Iran. In Vienna, the negotiations to renew the nuclear deal got stuck before Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was elected. The west will have to be the one to make concessions, and given the geostrategic change that took place in Afghanistan this week, it will be easier to make excuses and explain why positions are being made flexible and Iranian dictates are accepted.
The same goes for the Europeans, who are worried about their continent being flooded by refugees. Iran has already set up a borderline area on the Afghanistan border to take in refugees. Europe would be happy to pay Iran a lot to ensure that they stay there. At a time when it looked like the ayatollah regime was facing an existential test, Iran turned out to be the big winner from the American retreat.
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