TEHRAN (Iran News) –A Taliban spokesman has rejected a US military official’s claim that the group’s inability or unwillingness to contain extremist groups will destabilize central and southern Asia.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) –The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has invested 35 million dollars in Iran’s southeastern port city of Chabahar on commercial, residential and administrative projects, the Iranian special envoy to Kabul announced.

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In this meeting, Kazemi Qomi consulted with this senior Taliban official about the all-round expansion of relations and Iran’s water share from the Hirmand river.

The foreign minister of the Taliban has also emphasized removing the technical obstacles and measures that prevent the waste of Hirmand water.

Kazemi Qomi officially started his mission in Afghanistan as the new ambassador of Iran in Kabul this Saturday.

Earlier this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian held a phone conversation with Amir Khan Muttaqi.

In this call, Amir Abdollahian condemned a terrorist attack in Kabul that left a large number of the staffers of Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry dead or injured.

Amir Abdollahian condoled with the acting Afghan foreign minister, the ministry’s staffers and their families, and wished swift recovery for the injured.

The Iranian foreign minister said the terror attack outside the entrance to Afghanistan’s foreign ministry is very regrettable and we strongly condemn it.

Amir Abdollahian added terrorism is the common enemy of the regional countries and that terrorists seek fulfilling the goals and desires of world arrogance by killing innocent people so that the arrogant powers could dominate the regional countries.

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In a post on his Twitter account, Hassan Kazemi Qomi said he has held constructive negotiations with acting Taliban First Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul.
“In these meetings, the two sides stressed the need for promotion of positive interaction and expansion of relations in various fields, particularly the economic field, and called for enhancement of security cooperation in the fight against Daesh and outlaws on both sides of the common border,” the Iranian envoy said.
Kazemi Qomi also noted that Iran and the Taliban emphasized the need for vigilance and caution in countering the common enemies, who seek to sow discord the Iranian and Afghan nations.
Afghanistan has been in turmoil since the Taliban, who had previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, regained power in August 2021 amid a chaotic U.S. troop withdrawal from the war-torn country.
Since then the country has been the scene of several terrorist attacks, most of them carried out by the Daesh terrorist group.
Just on August 6, at least eight people were killed and 18 others injured in Kabul  during a Shia mourning gathering in the holy month of Muharram.
The explosion took place in the Sarkariz area of Kabul. The explosive devices were placed in a cart.
ISIS has claimed the responsibility for the bomb attack.
Also in April, at least six people were killed and 11 others wounded, including students, in a twin suicide bombing outside a boys’ school in western Kabul.
Two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were detonated outside Abdul Rahim Shahid high school, located in the predominantly Hazara neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, while students were leaving their morning classes.
In May 2021, before the U.S. left Afghanistan, three bombs went off outside a girls’ school also in Dasht-e-Barchi, killing at least 95 people and wounding 240 more, many of whom were young students.
In October 2021, Daesh also conducted two separate suicide attacks at mosques, two of the highest civilian casualty incidents of explosive violence recorded in the country, after the bombing of the girls’ school in Dasht-e-Barchi and the explosions at Kabul’s international airport during the August evacuations. The first incident in October targeted the Said Abad Shia mosque in Kunduz city that killed at least 50 and wounded 100 more. A week later, an ISKP (Islamic State – Khorasan Province) suicide attack on the Bibi Fatima mosque in Kandahar killed at least 63 people and wounded 93 others.

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On Sunday, Afghan news media broke the news that clashes took place between the border guards of Iran and the Taliban in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

Iran confirmed the news and moved quickly to prevent the issue from spiraling out of control.

Iran’s Deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs Seyed Majid Mir-Ahmadi said the clashes erupted in the Hirmand region when a small group of Taliban border guards ignored border laws and took provocative measures in the Zahak region.  The Taliban forces opened fire on Iranian border guards after entering an area they were not authorized to, which prompted the Iranian side to respond in kind. The clashes lasted for an hour and resulted in the killing of a Taliban member and the injury of another one.

The episode came to an end thanks to Iran’s prudence and diplomatic efforts. Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran’s special envoy for Afghanistan, who has been busy over the last year coordinating Iran’s Afghanistan policy, moved to calm the situation.

He said a meeting was held with Taliban defense officials in the wake of the clashes and it resulted in a decision to form a joint committee between Tehran and Kabul to address border issues and prevent the recurrence of border clashes.

The Iranian envoy said the Taliban defense officials instructed their border guards to avoid frictions with their Iranian counterparts after the meeting.

The clashes took place because the Taliban border guards were unfamiliar with the complexities of the porous Iran-Afghanistan borders, according to Iranian officials. Iran’s state news agency IRNA said the Taliban guards were conducting patrols inside Iranian territories.

This may explain Iran’s calm approach and its measured response to Taliban border infractions despite the fact that Sunday’s clashes were not the first in their kind. Over the last year, several similar clashes took place and in all of them Iran sought to soothe tensions.

That’s because Iran believes that Taliban forces are yet to get familiar with border issues. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani referred to this on Monday.

“Our understanding of the events of the past two days on the common border with Afghanistan is that these events seem to be caused by the lack of proper attention and knowledge of the Afghan border guards about the common border lines and the known border lines of the two countries,” Kanaani said.

“Last year, we created a security wall to deal with traffickers and drug trafficking. In some of these areas, it seems that the Afghan border guards are not aware of the border situation and do not have accurate knowledge of border areas and lines. And some of their actions and movements cause misunderstandings and sometimes border clashes,” he added.

The spokesman noted, “Iran’s border guard forces closely monitor the border movements along the borders of the region. We expect the authorities of Afghanistan to train their border guard forces more carefully. And they should be familiar with the border lines and know their duties so that we do not witness the repetition of such incidents.”

Therefore, border misunderstandings can certainly be cleared up through a Taliban decision to sufficiently train Afghan border guards on border issues. Iran is not seeking to escalate tensions with Afghanistan. Quite on the contrary, it seeks better relations with the war-torn country.

But there are voices in Iran calling for a tougher stance on the Taliban in case border clashes continue. Shahriyar Heidari, an Iranian lawmaker, told ILNA that now Iran is not taking decisive action against the Taliban because it blames border clashes on the Taliban’s unawareness of border laws but if the Taliban continue to violate these laws, they will receive a decisive response.

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Hossein Amir Abdollahian made the comments during a phone conversation on Thursday with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the acting Afghan foreign minister.

According to the Iranian official, a high-ranking delegation from Iran’s Ministry of Energy will visit Afghanistan to work on removing any remaining barriers that prevent Iran from drawing water directly from the Helmand River.

Afghanistan and Iran have been involved in a prolonged dispute for many years over water sharing. In a 1973 agreement on water sharing, the two parties agreed that Afghanistan would provide Iran with an average of 820 million cubic meters of water annually.

The Islamic Republic has chastised Afghanistan for breaking the deal on several occasions.

The development of many hydroelectric projects on the river, most notably the Kamal Khan dam in Nimrouz province and the Kajaki dam located 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Kandahar province, has exacerbated the situation.

On Wednesday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi urged serious action on Iran’s water rights from Helmand.

Raisi gave the go-ahead for the issue to be addressed by the nation’s foreign and energy ministries, stating that “a popular government would, under no pretexts, back down from pursuing the nation’s rights.”

Amir Abdollahian said that Kabul’s decision to permit Tehran to use its water right would serve as an essential indicator of the Afghan government’s adherence to its commitments under international law toward the Islamic Republic.

He cited Sistan and Baluchestan in southeast Iran as being dependent on Helmand’s water, warning that if the problem was not expeditiously and seriously rectified, it might harm other areas of cooperation between the two nations.

For his part, the Afghan official characterized the relationships as brotherly and intended to aid the Afghan country.

He said that Afghanistan is committed to letting Iran use its water rights, offering to set up a collaborative technical and operational team that might change the water’s course to flow back towards Iranian territory.

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And in all these incidents Iran exercised maximum restraint to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control while keeping close contact with the ruling authorities in Kabul to make them understand the gravity of the situation.

On March 23, an Iranian police officer lost his life during clashes with militants in eastern Iran. Nearly two weeks later, on April 5, three Iranian clerics were stabbed by an Afghan extremist at the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad two of them lost their lives due to severe injuries. On April 23, the convoy of the commander of the IRGC Special Forces in Zahedan came under attack which resulted in the death of the commander’s bodyguard.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, which is a stone’s throw from the location of the forgoing incidents, a wave of explosions killed and injured dozens of Shiite and Sunni civilians. Six terrorist attacks hit Afghanistan in a period of four days.

Iran sensed danger early and warned about plots to instigate a sectarian war in Afghanistan and direct it to Iran. The Iranian Foreign Minister was quick to denounce the attacks in Afghanistan and reminded the Taliban of its responsibility toward maintaining peace and security.

In light of the recurrence of numerous explosions in different cities of Afghanistan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh expressed Iran’s concern about these tragic events. He referred to the blind terrorist acts that took place during the holy month of Ramadan, which coincides with the presence of more people in mosques, describing the targeting of fasting worshipers as a repulsive act.

Shiite and Sunni mosques were equally targeted by bomb explosions in Afghanistan, something that deeply concerned Iran. Following an explosion at the Mawlawi Sekandar mosque for Sunni Muslims, Khatibzadeh pointed to a series of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan over the past days and described the escalation of violence as a source of deep concern.

“The attack on the Sunni mosque in Kunduz Province, which followed yesterday’s attack on the Shia mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif, clearly shows the evil goals of the terrorists serving as mercenaries for foreigners, who are seeking to create a civil war in Afghanistan,” he added.

Also, Iranian President Ayatollah Seyed Ebrahim Raisi used his capacity as the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to warn about threats against the people of Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

“Following the recurrence of criminal terrorist explosions in schools and mosques in different parts of Afghanistan, which have resulted in the martyrdom and injury of a significant number of Afghans, the President sent a message and warned about the spread of threats against the Afghan people and nations in the region,” the official website of the Iranian presidency said in a statement, adding, “The President of the Supreme National Security Council also stressed the responsibility of the Afghan rulers in identifying and punishing the terrorists responsible for the recent attacks, and said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to cooperate and use all its means to counter the threat of Takfiri terrorism and prevent recurrence of these tragedies.”

Iran is exercising restraint on Afghanistan and has extended a helping hand to the battle-scarred country, but in the last month there have been several dangerous incidents, each of which has the potential to provoke misunderstanding.

“The situation in Afghanistan, including all ethnic and religious groups, has been important to the Islamic Republic of Iran since day one, and the Afghan government’s definite responsibility to all ethnicities and groups has been reminded,” Khatibzadeh said in a Monday presser. “We do not have a minority in Afghanistan, we have tribes that all share the present and the future of Afghanistan.”

Underlining the Taliban’s definite responsibility to ensure the security of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan, Khatibzadeh said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets that [Afghanistan’s] governing body has not yet been able to establish the necessary security in some areas.”

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Bahador Aminian made the offer after visiting Ghazni and meeting with Taliban officials in the province on Thursday.

During the visit, the diplomat promised that the Iranian government would cooperate in reconstruction of the province’s historical monuments, ISNA reported.

Aminian also met with local officials and visited the museum and some historical monuments in Ghazni.

The Iranian ambassador to Afghanistan called Ghazni a historic province and said that Iranians had always been interested in Ghazni and that the province had figures such as Abu Rayhan al-Biruni and Hakim Sanai.

Ghazni was once one of the glorious cities of the region.

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