Iran's ambiguous attitude towards the Taliban, "the West" and "the East"

In the second segment of the third episode of the Cross-border Talks Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat tries to find out a number of issues about Iran's attitude towards the Taliban, the foreign policy priorities of the new administration of the president Ebrahim Raisi and the future of the nuclear agreement. Vladimir Mitev - a Bulgarian-Romanian Iranologist, explains that Iran has certain duality within the state and society. E.g. it has two armies - a national one and one loyal to the Islamic character of the country - the Revolutionary Guards. And the attitudes towards the Taliban are different. One hand the Revolutionary Guards are engaging the Taliban. On the other hand, Iranians have experience of suffering from the Taliban and fear possible getting involved in "a trap" in Afghanistan set up for them. The cabinet of Rouhani had a general pro-Western foreign policy line. But the fact that Raisi's foreign minister Amir Abdollahian looks to the East, doesn't mean that Iran makes a truly major shift. Its pro-Western people, the pro-European middle class remain present. Towards the end of the interview the two interlocutors discuss the various social, economic, medical, humanitarian and water crisis in Iran. Their conclusion is that those crisis require international cooperation between Iran and the world. And that means that relations with and of Tehran should not be seen only as power relations. The people's interests must be in the center of international relations.