8am: There is no doubt that the ISIS Khorasan operates in Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban. Although the Taliban deny this issue, occasionally they report attacks on ISIS hideouts in certain provinces, which is a significant contradiction. However, the idea of a country and a group supporting ISIS against the Taliban is at least dubious for now. Countries like Russia and Iran have repeatedly accused the United States of supporting ISIS in Afghanistan over the past two and a half years; a claim that is quite surprising. For example, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, claimed last June that the United States supports ISIS and Al-Qaeda groups in Afghanistan. Lavrov had said that America seeks to keep Afghanistan in a perpetual state of unrest with this action. Following that, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to Afghanistan, claimed in early August of the same year in an interview with Iranian media that Washington uses ISIS as a tool to pressurize the Taliban. He even stated that America has replaced ISIS with its military forces in Afghanistan. Click here to read more (external link).