Although some Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia andTurkey, have tried to influence developments in Afghanistan fromtime to time, Iran—due to a long common history, geographic proximity, and cultural similarities—is by far Afghanistan’s most importantneighbor. In this article I seek to demonstrate that Iran, contraryto its image and often even more consistently than pro-Westerncountries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has since 1979 acted infavor of an independent, centrally and moderately governedAfghanistan. Therefore, Iran will probably also be a stabilizing factorrather than a spoiler in every post–International Security AssistanceForce (ISAF) scenario in Kabul.