Why Iran Isn’t Supporting ISIS-K

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Iran has little interest in sponsoring a terrorist group that does not act in its interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus. 

Reports suggests that Iran may be using ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) as a proxy to destabilize Azerbaijan. With the arrest last month of three individuals accused of plotting an attack on the Israeli embassy in Baku, after which it was revealed that the would-be perpetrators had conspired with ISIS-K to carry out the attack.

The Islamic Republic, the author argues, has good reason to support such acts of terrorism in Azerbaijan, owing to Baku’s close ties with Israel and the United States. 

While there is no denying the fact that ties between Tehran and Baku hit rock bottom over Iranian suspicions of Israel using Azeri airspace during the 12-Day War, Epstein omits some important facts that seriously undermine his case.

The major and indeed startling omission in his piece is that ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the double suicide bombing in the Iranian city of Kerman in early 2024, which resulted in the death of over 90 people.

This massacre occurred during the annual commemoration ceremony of the death of former IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, marking the worst ever terrorist attack on Iranian soil since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

What is all the more startling in Epstein’s omission of this incident is its Central Asian connection. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence revealed that one of the suicide bombers was a Tajik national and that the mastermind of the attack was a Tajik national.

Since that incident, Tehran and Dushanbe have upgraded their security cooperation, culminating in a major deal inked in April 2025 to boost joint efforts against cross-border threats, including but not limited to organised terrorism.

Even prior to the Kerman massacre, shared concerns over terrorism appear to have brought the two countries closer together. After a period of soured relations related to the Islamic Republic’s alleged support for the outlawed Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), the two nations reconciled in 2019, expressing their joint concern over the growing terrorist threat. This occurred precisely at the time when there was a notable uptick in ISIS-K attacks in Afghanistan, which shares a border with both Iran and Tajikistan.

That the two nations set aside differences as the ISIS-K threat was metastasizing leads to two important conclusions: that Tajikistan saw in Iran a valuable counterterrorism partner, which required a recalibration of bilateral ties; and that Iran, for its part, concluded that ISIS-K posed a significant enough threat to warrant this recalibration.

While Epstein tries to support his argument by citing earlier accusations by Tajik authorities linking Iran to a terrorist attack that killed four foreign cyclists in the Danghara district in 2018, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, he fails to mention the growing cooperation between Tehran and Dushanbe, which is driven largely by shared concerns over ISIS-K. 

This weakens the argument that Iran may be employing the services of ISIS-K in Azerbaijan, not least given that the latter—unlike Tajikistan—shares a border with Iran. By supporting ISIS-K terrorism in Azerbaijan, Iran would run the major risk of bringing more instability to its own doorstep; a scenario that simply doesn’t add up based on how Tehran upgraded its ties with Dushanbe against the backdrop of a morphing ISIS-K threat.

One could argue that Azerbaijan’s case differs from Tajikistan’s because of Baku’s close ties with Israel. Based on this logic, Tehran would be willing to take the risk of using ISIS as a proxy in Azerbaijan, if only to undermine Israeli war plans. 

This assumes that Iran perceives ISIS as a secondary and manageable threat. However, there is a good reason to believe that such an assessment is misplaced. Aside from the fact that ISIS is responsible for the worst-ever terror attack against the Islamic Republic, Iranian intelligence assessments released shortly after the twelve-day war identify “Takfiris” (ie, Salafi-Jihadi groups like ISIS) as a top security challenge, going as far as to warn of a threat emanating from post-Assad Syria.

Not only does this again refute the notion that Iran may risk a morphing ISIS right on its doorstep on the border with Azerbaijan, but it also refutes the argument that the 12-Day War may have led Iran to believe that ISIS poses a secondary threat compared to Israel, and that a marriage of convenience with ISIS in Azerbaijan is therefore a risk worth taking.  

Another important omission by Epstein relates to Iran’s ties with the Afghan Taliban. In explaining why Iran may be suspected of collaborating with ISIS-K in Azerbaijan, he refers to the improved ties between Tehran and Kabul on the basis that the Taliban is also a “Sunni group”.

What he fails to mention is that the two sides have drawn closer together because ISIS-K is a common enemy. For Iran, the Taliban is seen as the lesser of two evils compared to ISIS and its vehement anti-Shiism, in particular ISIS-K, which perpetrated the Kerman attacks. Taliban, meanwhile, perceives ISIS-K as a threat to its own rule and has frequently clashed with the terrorist group.

Therefore, Epstein’s argument that Iran’s cooperation with the Taliban makes it susceptible to cooperation with ISIS falls flat.

ISIS-K’s territorial ambitions in Iran are also missing in Epstein’s piece. The group derives its name from the historical region of Khorasan, which spans Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, Central Asia, and Iran. Its project is to build a caliphate on these territories akin to the one that previously existed in parts of Iraq and Syria. This also helps explain the joint cooperation between Iran and countries like Afghanistan and Tajikistan against the group.

Based on the purported “sponsor-proxy” relationship between Iran and ISIS, Epstein calls for upgrading US ties with Azerbaijan, arguing that this is necessary to protect American interests in the Caucasus region, namely the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity,” an American-sponsored project linking southern Armenia to Turkey through Azerbaijan.

One of his recommendations is for an enhanced security and intelligence partnership between the United States, Israel, and Azerbaijan. Such measures could severely diminish the prospects of substantive progress in the nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran, all on the basis of unfounded suspicions. 


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