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Strong Taliban Reaction to Recent Statements by U.S. Officials: \u201cA Pretext for Attacking Us.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, strongly reacted to the United States\u2019 decision to place Afghanistan under Taliban control on the list of so-called \u201chostage-taking countries,\u201d describing it as \u201cclear political pretext-building\u201d against the group.<\/strong><\/p>\n He stressed that the issue of detained U.S. citizens is \u201cneither complex nor serious\u201d and can be resolved through dialogue or judicial processes.<\/strong><\/p>\n Mujahid added that only two U.S. citizens are currently in Taliban custody and that any other claims including the alleged detention of Mahmood Shah Habibi are untrue.<\/strong><\/p>\n However, U.S. officials have warned that if the detained citizens are not released, Washington may undertake severe military measures against the Taliban.<\/strong><\/p>\n In response, the Taliban spokesperson said pressure and threats are not solutions and that exaggerating the issue is merely \u201cpretext-building for future scenarios,\u201d scenarios whose details remain unclear but could include military action.<\/strong><\/p>\n Mujahid also referred to regional developments, stating that the Taliban would not intervene in a war involving the United States and Israel against Iran but expressed concern about the continuation of hostilities.<\/strong><\/p>\n He emphasised that U.S. policy towards the Taliban still resembles the wartime period, with sanctions, political pressure, and military threats continuing, and that the possibility of a direct attack on the Taliban remains under consideration at any time.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Strong Taliban Reaction to Recent Statements by U.S. Officials: \u201cA Pretext for Attacking Us.\u201d Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, strongly reacted to the United States\u2019 decision to place Afghanistan under Taliban control on the list of so-called \u201chostage-taking countries,\u201d describing it as \u201cclear political pretext-building\u201d against the group. He stressed that the issue of detained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15954,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15941\/revisions\/15954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elmedia.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}