Hussain Ehsani

Illustration by Dinmukhamed Kairulla. Five years after the Taliban returned to power, Afghanistan looks increasingly different from the country Pakistan expected to emerge in 2021. The Taliban remains firmly in control, but its relationship with Islamabad has deteriorated into something much more serious than a dispute over the border or […]

On February 15, 2026, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Radio Iran’s Pashto service that Kabul would be prepared to cooperate with the Islamic Republic in the event of a U.S. military attack — if Tehran formally requested assistance. He added that Iran had emerged victorious from its June 2025 war

Introduction In January 2025, reports emerged that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had assured U.S. envoy Steven Witkoff that Tehran would not carry out 800 executions of protesters. According to multiple accounts, this assurance may have led President Donald Trump to halt a planned military strike against Iran. The episode

On the day after the Taliban seized Kabul in 2021, a Turkish Airlines flight carrying 234 passengers arrived in Istanbul. Among them was Sarwar Danish, Afghanistan’s Second Vice President, and two members of President Ashraf Ghani’s fleeing cabinet. Danish, became the highest-ranking Hazara official of the Afghan government to flee

After the ceasefire that ended Israel’s 12-day war against Iran, Iranian officials were stunned by the sophistication of the Mossad’s operation and alarmed by the revelation of where the security breach had occurred. Despite mounting evidence of a high-level intelligence breach, some Iranian officials deflected blame by targeting a French