Iran is set to host a conference on Afghanistan’s political future and the establishment of a new government next week in Tehran.
“The conference will begin on October 27 and will be attended by foreign ministers from neighboring nations as well as a delegate from Russi,” said Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Foreign Office.
Iran would make an appeal at the summit, according to Khatibzadeh, for a government that includes all political organizations, including the Taliban.
“In Afghanistan, Iran desires peace; it does not desire violence or terrorism.
“All neighboring states should stand behind the Afghan people on this path,” the spokesman stated at a press conference.
In Iran, there are still differences on how the government should deal with the hard-line Islamist Taliban in the near future.
Some political circles in Tehran believe that the Taliban have changed and are no longer the Islamist movement of recent years.
Others, however, say that recent developments have proven just the opposite.
Moreover, they say, Shiite Iran will always remain a religious arch-enemy for the Sunni Taliban extremists.
A new wave of refugees feared by Tehran, as after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, has so far failed to materialise.
The reason, according to observers, is the acute economic crisis in Iran as well as the strict controls due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The provisional buffer zones set up at the three border crossings in the north and south-east of the country were also said to have remained empty so far.