Thousands of people accompanied the coffins of slain Iranian diplomats to their graves in Tehran yesterday, a public display of mourning bound to stoke the anger against the Taliban regime just days before military exercises on the border with Afghanistan.
But while Tehran gave official sanction to a public venting of rage against its neighbour, the puritanical Taliban militia that rules virtually all of Afghanistan, and its closest ally - Pakistan - struggled to effect a reconciliation.
In Kabul, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, appealed to the United Nations to help resolve the crisis. "The problems between Afghanistan and Iran will not be solved under military pressure," he said.
In Tehran, few appeared willing to listen. The crowds, chanting "Death to the Taliban", poured out of mosques after Friday prayers to follow the bodies to their resting place near the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's revolution.
At Tehran University, Mr Zabihullah Bakhshi, a member of the militant Ansar-e Hezbollah group, set his hand on one coffin. "We will get your revenge. We will not let your blood go to waste," he shouted, dressed in camouflage and carrying a rifle.
A statement read at the end of the funerals called on the Iranian government to provide Afghans living in Iran with weapons to "fight the backward Taliban militia in Afghanistan".
In Islamabad, Pakistan's foreign minister, Mr Sartaj Aziz, announced that a diplomat is to travel to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar today to oversee the release of five Iranian civilians.
"As a goodwill gesture, the Afghan government had earlier released five Iranian prisoners and had followed it up by an announcement that another five would be released tomorrow, Saturday," Mr Aziz said. Iran says 60 of its nationals are held by the Taliban on suspicion of arms smuggling.
The gesture came as Pakistan announced it was locking its border crossing with Afghanistan to stop local Islamic extremists from travelling there to take up arms on behalf of a beleaguered neighbour.
Pakistan's medressahs, or religious seminaries, were the finishing school for the student army that now rules all but a few pockets of Afghanistan, as well as the Islamic extremists who terrorise the Shia minority in Punjab. Under the tutelage of Pakistani and Afghan scholars, the Taliban and local extremists cultivated the extreme version of Sunni Islam that has become their lode star, and infuriated mainly Shia Iran.
In Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are engaged in a proxy war for regional supremacy. Pakistan is widely believed to have created and backed the mainly Pashtunspeaking Taliban, while Iran favoured the opposition, which represents Shia Muslims and ethnic minority groups.
Such tensions already were simmering when the Taliban finally admitted last week that eight diplomats and a reporter had been killed in the capture of Mazar-iSharif, the last big city held by its opponents.
Yesterday, Tehran showed no inclination to step back from the brink, accusing the Taliban on state television of sacking its consulate and cultural centre in the town of Bamiyan, its most recent conquest on a march that has given the militia control of all but a few pockets of Afghanistan.
"Taliban's attack against Iranian centres in Bamiyan, which came despite the censure by the United Nations of their criminal act in Mazar-i-Sharif, is a clearly threatening action and an explicit insult against the international community," Mr Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Tehran's ambassador to the UN, was quoted as saying.
The efforts come amid a full military alert in Iran, with the Taliban rushing 6,000 fighters to a border already bristling with 70,000 Iranian soldiers in advance of next week's manoeuvres.