Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted a trilateral summit in Tehran on May 24 with his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts, Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari. While the three leaders met some three months ago in Tehran for a regional economic summit, this was their first trilateral meeting to discuss the threat posed by a growing Taliban insurgency on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. It also took place in the aftermath of two similar trilateral gatherings involving the Afghan and Pakistani heads of state, one in Ankara and the second in Washington. Two things render this particular summit significant. The first significant aspect is that Iran hosted it. Iran is in the process of emerging as a regional player, especially in Afghanistan, where the United States has called on Iran to play a role in the fight against the growing Taliban insurgency. Despite Iran's participation in the U.S.-sponsored international meeting on Afghanistan held in The Hague on March 31, and despite efforts by the Obama administration to engage the clerical regime, gridlock persists between Washington and Tehran. There is no shortage of issues on which the two sides continue to clash. When it comes to Afghanistan, the Iranians are very suspicious of U.S. moves to negotiate with the Taliban and to involve Saudi Arabia (Iran's principal regional rival) in Afghanistan. In short, Tehran would like to be able to consolidate its position in the region before becoming part of a broader international effort in Afghanistan. The second significant aspect is that the May 24 summit involved Afghanistan's two most important neighbors. Iran and Pakistan not only share large borders with Afghanistan, they also have a disproportionate amount of influence in the country. Due to their respective ethno-linguistic ties to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran have played historic roles there, especially since the Islamist insurgency against the Soviet-backed Marxist Afghan regime broke out in the late 1970s. For these very reasons, if there is to be a political settlement to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, it will require a consensus involving Tehran, Islamabad and Afghanistan — and the process toward this end likely was kicked off in the Ahmadinejad-Karzai-Zardari meeting. With a growing realization within the region that the United States and its NATO allies will not find success in their struggle against the Taliban insurgency, and that they will not have a long-term commitment to the issue, the three capitals are increasingly moving toward seeking a regional solution. This is their neighborhood after all, and they certainly do not want jihadist nonstate actors undermining regional security and stability. Of the three, the Karzai government has perhaps the least room for maneuver because it faces the biggest threat from the Taliban, which explains recent reports about an acceleration in Kabul's efforts to reach out to Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar. While the Pakistanis are not facing the same magnitude of threat as the Afghans, the rise of the Taliban on both sides of the Durand Line poses a critical threat to Pakistani national security, too. For their part, the Iranians do not want to see Taliban emirates appear in two countries on their eastern flank. Complicating the picture, Pakistan and Iran both support their preferred Taliban actors in Afghanistan, and both are fighting their own Balochi insurgencies. The bulk of the conversations among the three presidents focused on the threat posed by Taliban militants. In the case of Iran and Pakistan, they also addressed opportunities. As Iran moves to consolidate its influence in Baghdad via Tehran's Iraqi Shiite allies, it is very much interested in projecting power in Afghanistan, especially given the deep U.S., Pakistani and Saudi involvement there. Iran also knows that it needs all the levers it can amass for use in its wider dealings with the United States and over Iraq, and Afghanistan is a major card in Iran's hand. For Pakistan, though Talibanization at home has weakened its bargaining power, Islamabad would like to make sure it keep its Afghan Taliban allies in Kabul to counter Pakistan's own regional rival, India, whose influence in Afghanistan has grown considerably since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Clearly, there was much for the three sides to sort out, and the May 24 meeting barely began to scratch the surface. But it started the process of sorting out the regional multilateral dynamic, which will play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of international efforts to combat the spreading Taliban insurgency in Southwest Asia.