There will have been no more interested party in developments in neighbouring Afghanistan than the leadership in Tehran. Iran’s relationship with the Taliban has been fraught at times, cooperative at others, given the anxiety in Tehran over mistreatment of Afghanistan’s Shia population.
Shia Iran and the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban are not natural partners.
Further afield, the latest developments in Afghanistan will be capturing the close attention of Gulf states. Qatar has provided a diplomatic haven for the Taliban during peace talks with the vanquished Ghani government. This peace initiative, under US auspices, is now revealed to have been a foil for the Taliban’s ambitions to return to power in its own right.
How any reasonable observer could have believed otherwise is confounding.
In Saudi Arabian foreign policy, Afghanistan is not a zero sum game.
More generally, the hit to US standing in the region will be worrying for its moderate Arab allies. This includes Egypt and…