Afghan burqa-clad women walk along a street in Fayzabad district of Badakhshan province on Feb 5, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

TEHRAN - A top Iranian security official on Wednesday warned against letting "transregional interference" in Afghanistan cause insecurity in the country and to the entire region.

Iran maintains that imposing any political system on the country through foreign interference or internal confrontation will only lead to greater instability and insecurity in Afghanistan, stressed Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, noting the United States is constantly seeking to turn Afghanistan into a "platform for spreading insecurity and terrorism"

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), made the remark in an address to the fifth round of the regional security dialogue in the Russian capital of Moscow, according to the official news agency IRNA.

Shamkhani said insecurity has always been a threat to the Afghan people's lives and foreign interference can turn it into a common threat to the entire region.

He stressed the main priority is to ensure security, peace, stability and progress in Afghanistan.

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Shamkhani said the way to end "the vicious insecurity-instability cycle in Afghanistan" is through the implementation of palpable measures by the country's caretaker government and other internal players.

Iran maintains that imposing any political system on the country through foreign interference or internal confrontation will only lead to greater instability and insecurity in Afghanistan, he stressed, noting the United States is constantly seeking to turn Afghanistan into a "platform for spreading insecurity and terrorism."

Commenting on Afghanistan's assets frozen by the United States, the SNSC chief stressed that they belong to the people of the country. "Afghan people must not be deprived of their assets through cruel and illegal sanctions."

Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council of Russia, delivered a speech at beginning of the fifth round of the regional security dialogue on Wednesday. Security officials from Iran, India, China, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan also took part in the meetings.

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In the wake of the terror attacks on New York and Washington on Sept 11, 2001, the United States led a military coalition to invade Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban government, which allegedly sheltered the then-leader of the terror network Osama Bin Laden.

In late August 2021, the US forces conducted a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan with a military defeat, leaving the war-torn country in extreme poverty and deep pain. Public data showed that more than 50,000 Afghan civilians and nearly 70,000 Afghan security personnel reportedly had been killed during the two-decade-long US occupation of Afghanistan.

The United States has also frozen Afghanistan's overseas assets worth more than $9b as part of its sanctions against the new government.