Second anti-Taliban commander killed in Iran in under four months
A second former Afghan security commander opposed to the Taliban has been killed in Iran in under four months, raising concerns among Afghan ex-military figures living in the country.
A second former Afghan security commander opposed to the Taliban has been killed in Iran in under four months, raising concerns among Afghan ex-military figures living in the country.
On Wednesday, former Afghan police general Ikramuddin Sari was shot dead by masked assailants near his home in Tehran, according to sources close to him.
He was attacked alongside an associate near their residence in southern Tehran and died while being transferred to hospital, the sources told Afghanistan International.
Sari, a former police commander in Baghlan and Takhar provinces, fled to Iran after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Reports in recent months had suggested Iranian police had detained and questioned him, though no official explanation was given.
Taliban's 'extraterritorial assassinations'
The killing follows the September shooting of Maroof Ghulami, a political and military figure close to veteran anti-Taliban leader Ismail Khan. He was killed by gunfire in the religious city of Mashhad.
People close to both men have blamed the Taliban for their deaths, according to Afghanistan International.
The attacks, an Afghan military source said, signal the start of what he described as Taliban “extraterritorial assassinations,” adding that the group has repeatedly threatened to target opponents abroad.
Senior Taliban official Mohammad Nabi Omari has previously said the group could kill opponents outside Afghanistan “with as little as 500 Pakistani rupees,” while Saeed Khosti, a former spokesperson for the de facto Taliban Ministry of Interior, warned two years ago that hundreds of volunteers were ready to target critics overseas.
Iranian authorities have remained publicly silent on Sari’s killing. Tehran has also provided no detailed update on the investigation into Ghulami’s death.
Iranian police said in September they arrested three suspects in that case but later released two, offering no clarity on affiliations.
A source familiar with the investigation told Afghanistan International that the remaining suspect was a Taliban operative, a comment not confirmed by Iranian authorities.
Calls for accountability
Sari, originally from Kapisa province, was regarded as a professional officer who served as police commander in Nuristan, Baghlan and Takhar, and as an adviser to Afghanistan’s interior ministry.
In Iran, he acted as an informal representative for former Afghan soldiers, advocating for their rights, opposing deportations and openly criticizing the Taliban.
The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), led by Ahmad Massoud, called on Iran to conduct a “transparent, serious and independent” investigation, describing Sari’s killing as a “targeted terrorist act.”
The Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan, led by Salahuddin Rabbani, also condemned the killing and urged Iranian authorities to identify those responsible.
Iran, which has handed Afghanistan’s embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad to the Taliban, has faced growing criticism for failing to protect Afghan dissidents on its soil even as it seeks closer ties with the Taliban-led administration.
“Israel does not have the capacity for an intense war of attrition or for confronting a major power like Iran, and it is clear that another war would not end in 12 days as the previous one did,” Javan wrote in an analysis on Wednesday.
The 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025 was a brief but intense conflict. It began with extensive Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
The United States became militarily involved mid‑conflict. On June 22, US Air Force and Navy forces carried out coordinated strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – in an operation codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, using B‑2 bombers and submarine‑launched missiles, marking the first US offensive against Iranian territory in decades. Iranian forces fired missiles at US assets in Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, after those strikes.
The conflict ended with a US and Qatari-mediated ceasefire, but it caused significant casualties, infrastructure damage.
Israeli rhetoric, the paper said, has shifted from threats of decisive victory to language of caution and warnings about the costs of renewed conflict.
Air strikes, according to Javan, failed to halt what it called Iran’s “distributed and self-sufficient” military production. The paper also argued that the previous fighting severely strained Israel’s multilayer missile defense systems.
“Israeli officials are now openly speaking of the ‘real threat’ posed by Iran’s missiles and warning that without preventive action Iran could reach annual production of thousands of missiles,” the paper said.
Focus shifts from battlefield to society
Javan framed the change in tone as evidence that the military option has lost credibility, writing that the inability to control the consequences of war has weakened Israel’s long-standing doctrine of absolute military superiority.
“War in the contemporary world is not merely a military confrontation, but a test of social capacity, political cohesion and national resilience,” the paper wrote, arguing that internal divisions, political strains and reliance on external support limit Israel’s ability to endure a prolonged conflict.
The article concluded that future confrontation will be shaped as much by narratives and domestic resilience as by missiles and air defenses.
The defendant, identified as Yaghoub Karimpour, a resident of Miandoab in West Azarbaijan province, was arrested by Iran’s intelligence ministry during the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel earlier this year, the sources said.
Karimpour, born in 1984, was convicted of “corruption on earth” through alleged cooperation with Israel and the transmission of data, they added. He is currently being held in Urmia Central Prison.
According to the sources, Karimpour has denied the charges throughout his detention and trial, saying he had no links to Israel and had not passed any information. They said he told investigators that confessions attributed to him were extracted under coercion.
Iran’s judiciary has not publicly commented on the case, and Reuters was not able to independently verify the allegations.
Iranian authorities have intensified arrests, prosecutions and executions on charges of espionage or collaboration with Israel in the months following the brief war. Officials say the measures are necessary to safeguard national security, while rights groups say the trials often lack transparency and rely on forced confessions.
In recent weeks, Iran has carried out several executions linked to espionage allegations.
Earlier in December, authorities executed Aghil Keshavarz, an architecture student, after convicting him of spying for Israel, state-linked media reported.
The Hengaw human rights organization said that at least 17 people have been executed in Iran this year on charges related to cooperation with Israel, 15 of them after the conflict.
Iranian officials have arrested hundreds of people since the war on suspicion of espionage or collaboration with Israel.
Many of the cases have been pursued under a law passed by parliament in October that broadened definitions of espionage and cooperation with “hostile states,” including Israel and the United States, and allows for capital punishment in a wide range of activities involving alleged information sharing.
