TEHRAN – An Iranian diplomat on Saturday blamed the U.S. for the current situation in Afghanistan, saying the turmoil in the Central Asian country has resulted from 20 years of American occupation.

Rasoul Mousavi, the West Asia director general at Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the answer for U.S. “daydreaming” about a better world could be sought today in Afghanistan.

“How has the world changed from 11 September 2001 to 11 September 2021,” Mousavi asked in a tweet as the world is watching the situation in Afghanistan on the anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. which provided a pretext for the Bush administration to launch attack on Afghanistan that lasted for 20 years.

The U.S. withdrawal was marked by chaos, scandal and a deadly terrorist attack on the Kabul international airport.

What daydreaming for a safer, freer, more developed, more integrated, and more Westernized world didn’t they do, but where we are today? Mousavi continued asking.

The answer should be sought for in Afghanistan, he added, asking where did it start and where is it now after all these calamities?

The United Nations has been warning of massive violence, displacement and hunger in Afghanistan.

In a commentary on Saturday, CNN also said America went into battle in 2001. Twenty years on, it is at war with itself, its democracy threatened from within in a way Osama bin Laden never managed.

September 11 doesn't explain everything. But the war on terror took America in a political direction from which there was no coming back.

A sharp, successful war in Afghanistan bogged down into a 20-year quagmire that ended only last month. Another war in Iraq, fought on false pretenses, was its own early version of a Big Lie.

President George W. Bush went from being a champion on the rubble at Ground Zero to a leader destroyed by his own war. His successor, Obama, spent two terms struggling to bring the anti-terror campaign within the law and international morality, but his use of lethal drone strikes to take out terror targets also caused civilian casualties.

All the while, the thousands of deaths and injuries in foreign wars, the trillions of dollars spent on nation building, fury at Washington elites and prejudice against Islam brewed a pool of resentment ripe for a demagogue. And along came Donald Trump, boasting he was smarter than all the generals.

The political wounds of the post-9/11 years were exposed yet again in recent days, as the chaotic final withdrawal from Kabul brought history full circle: The fundamentalist Taliban -- who welcomed al Qaeda -- rule Afghanistan again.