Abstract
This article examines the impact of Afghanistan’s instability on Iran’s national security strategy during the period 2021 to 2025. The study seeks to identify, classify, and analyze the principal threats and challenges that Iran faces following the Taliban’s return to power. Drawing on the analytical framework of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies, the research adopts a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to explore political, military, socio-economic, and environmental dimensions of regional security. The methodological design integrates qualitative document analysis, expert assessment, scenario-building, and elements of the Delphi method. An exclusive interview with the Iranian Ambassador to Kazakhstan supplies first-hand insights into Tehran’s interpretation of the Afghan crisis and its implications for regional stability and interstate cooperation. The research identifies ten major existential threats, notably terrorism, religious extremism, transnational criminal networks, disputes over shared water resources, uncontrolled migration, and ecological degradation. These interconnected threats illustrate how Afghanistan’s internal instability affects Iran’s domestic security, border governance, economic interests, and foreign policy behavior. The findings demonstrate the adaptive nature of Iran’s strategic response, which combines pragmatic diplomacy, selective security cooperation, humanitarian engagement, and institutional resilience measures. On that basis, the paper proposes concrete policy recommendations to enhance Iran’s resilience to regional volatility, including strengthened border management, institutionalized cooperation on water governance, expanded regional integration mechanisms, and support for multilateral crisis-response platforms. The study contributes empirically to scholarship on regional security dynamics and offers actionable policy insights for state actors, international organizations and humanitarian agencies involved in conflict mitigation and stabilization.