For years, the Taliban have worked hard to sell a carefully curated image to the region and the world. They claim to be disciplined, centralized, and reformed. A movement that has supposedly transitioned from insurgency to governance. A force that can be engaged, managed, and trusted as a responsible authority. The assassination of former Afghan General Ikramuddin Saree in Tehran exposes this narrative for what it truly is: a strategic illusion.
A group that can plan, coordinate, and execute targeted killings inside another sovereign country is not disciplined in any institutional sense. It is autonomous, coercive, and expansionist. The ability of Taliban intelligence operatives to operate beyond Afghanistan’s borders, conduct surveillance for weeks, strike with precision, and withdraw safely demonstrates not reform, but confidence born of permissiveness. This was not an accident. It was a message.
The core myth that collapses here is the idea that the Taliban can be “contained” through engagement alone. Iran’s experience shows the opposite. By offering political space, diplomatic access, and operational latitude under the assumption of control, Tehran has enabled the Taliban to function as an externalized security actor rather than a domesticated partner. The result is not stability, but spillover.
Pakistan’s position stands in stark contrast. Islamabad has never claimed that the Taliban are manageable through trust or goodwill. Pakistan’s policy, often criticized internationally, has been rooted in enforcement, surveillance, and containment. Taliban networks inside Pakistan have been disrupted, restricted, and denied the freedom to operate independently. This is not because Pakistan endorses the Taliban’s ideology, but precisely because it understands their organizational nature.
The difference lies in approach. Iran treated the Taliban as a strategic partner. Pakistan treated them as a security risk to be managed. One approach produced assassinations on foreign soil. The other produced relative internal control.
This distinction matters for the international debate on engagement with extremist actors. The assassination in Tehran demonstrates that the Taliban do not internalize state discipline. They do not subordinate violence to diplomacy. They do not respect host-state red lines unless those lines are actively enforced. Where enforcement weakens, autonomy expands. Where autonomy expands, violence follows.
Pakistan has warned about this dynamic for years. It has argued that engagement without enforcement does not moderate extremist groups, it emboldens them. The events in Iran validate that warning. The Taliban did not become more restrained through acceptance. They became more capable.
The idea that the Taliban can be transformed into a conventional governing partner ignores their structural reality. They are not a normal political actor bound by institutional accountability. They are a movement that blends intelligence operations, coercion, and ideological enforcement into a single operational framework. This framework does not dissolve when borders change. It adapts.
By preventing Taliban networks from operating freely, Pakistan has limited their capacity to project violence outward from its territory. That record is often overlooked, but it is now increasingly relevant. The absence of targeted assassinations of Afghan exiles in Pakistan is not accidental. It is the result of policy choices rooted in control rather than accommodation.
The Tehran assassination therefore should not be viewed as an isolated incident. It is evidence that the Taliban remain an actor that responds only to pressure, not partnership. It also reinforces a critical lesson for the region. Stability is not achieved by assuming discipline where none exists. It is achieved by recognizing threat structures as they are, not as one wishes them to be.
In exposing the myth of Taliban discipline, this incident indirectly strengthens Pakistan’s long-held position. Engagement without enforcement enables extremism. Containment, however imperfect, prevents it from metastasizing beyond borders.
