Iran has officially handed the Afghan embassy in Tehran over to the Taliban, becoming the first country to accept the Taliban appointed ambassador but yet to recognize its government.
The Taliban foreign ministry said a seven-member team of “experienced diplomats,” led by a newly appointed chargé d’affaires” have arrived in Tehran to formally assume the office.
The ministry called the move an important step in improving bilateral relations between the two neighboring countries.
“We believe that with the new appointments, we would witness transparency in the affairs of the embassy as well as expanded relations in various fields between the two Muslim and brotherly countries,” the ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said.
Iran did not provide details, but termed the development as an internal issue of Afghanistan.
“The issue of handing over and transformation of the Afghan embassy in Tehran is an internal matter (related to Afghanistan) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran has not entered into the matter by any means,” Meher quoted a statement from the ministry.
“Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not received any document or equipment or any other object belonging to the Afghan Embassy in Tehran,” it added.
Opposition condemns the move
The National Resistance Front (NRF) of Afghanistan, the opposition party, has strongly condemned Iran’s move in ceding the Afghan embassy to the Taliban.
A spokesperson of NRF, Sibghatullah Ahmadi in a statement said that this action was taken despite the Front’s concerns about its adverse consequences.
“Nonetheless, [Iran] allowed the representatives of the illegitimate and the terrorist group of Taliban to enter the diplomatic mission of Afghanistan,” the statement added.
The statement furthered that the political presence of the Taliban in Iran, with its “dark history” is “perilous”, especially for the millions of refugees in the country.
Good ties with both
It is worth mentioning that Iran has good relations with the Taliban as well as with NRF, composed of more Tajki people who announced war against the Taliban.
Since the return of the Taliban into power in 2021, no country has so far recognized them. However, Pakistan and Russia were the first countries that handed over the Afghan embassy to the Taliban. The third is now Iran.
It has been said that other countries like China, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have allowed the Taliban to appoint staff to manage the diplomatic missions, but they did not completely hand them over to them.
At the same time, a large number of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions around the world are active and open for every kind of business, and the host country is yet to decide on whether to hand it over to the Taliban.
Many countries refused to hand them over because they don’t want to work with the Taliban at the moment.
Culture ties between Afghanistan and Iran
Afghanistan and Iran share many cultural ties and even they speak the same language (Persian or Dari). Dari is one of the official languages in Afghanistan, and mostly spoken ever. All the statements were in Dari or in Pashto, the second largely spoken language in the country.
Iran and Afghanistan also celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and also there are millions of Afghans living in Iran and many of them don’t have legal stay documents.
But, when the Taliban seized power for the first time in the 90s, relations between Afghanistan and Iran strained after killing some Iranian diplomats.
However, now that the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Kabul and Tehran have opened trade, other commercial relations and also top Taliban officials visited Iran.
No recognitions yet
The Western countries did not recognize the Taliban yet, putting human rights and giving women access to education and work as the main demand for their recognition. They also asked for formation of an inclusive government representing all groups in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Shahabuddin Delawar, the acting minister of Mines and Petroleum said that the current government is bound by all its commitments to the world.
“The world also needs good interaction with Afghanistan and the world cannot ignore Afghanistan’s geographical location and the people of Afghanistan,” Delawar told a local news agency TOLOnews
Islamic Emirate is committed to the rights of all citizens of the country, he added.
Moreover, former US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said that the human rights situation and women’s rights to education and work is important for the international community and for the US.
The Taliban have barred women from workplaces and girls from schools and universities since they gained power in 2021. The international community has strongly reacted to the action and called on the Taliban to immediately reverse its decision and let the women and girls work and study.
