In an editorial on Sunday, Jomhuri-e Eslami blamed the former administration of late Ebrahim Raisi for providing the Taliban with various kinds of facilities, and advised the newly-inaugurated cabinet of President Massoud Pezeshkian not to follow suit.
“For those who feel the danger of the presence of millions of illegal Afghan nationals in our country, it is very strange that President Pezeshkian has not said anything about this issue and has not clarified his stance,” it wrote.
The daily also argues that after the 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban managed to take advantage of the existing facilities and send tens of thousands of its trained forces into Iran and settle them in different parts of the country, adding the armed militants have committed many crimes in Iranian cities and even villages.
Many Iranian citizens, media, and authorities have raised the alarm over the influx of undocumented Afghan migrants in Iran who have put an extra strain on the country’s resources and facilities.
Unofficial estimates put the number of Afghan migrants in Iran at over 8 million. Iranian officials have set March 20 as the deadline for the illegal migrants to leave the country.
