The escalation of tensions in the Middle East has reached unprecedented levels in recent years, against the backdrop of the devastating war in Gaza and the exchange of missiles in the waters of the Red Sea. In the midst of confusion, Iran decided on Tuesday to attack a nuclear power in an unprecedented “anti-terror” operation. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirmed that it had launched an air offensive against targets of the Jaish al-Adl group in Pakistan's Balochistan region, which resulted in the deaths of two minors, according to complaints from Islamabad.
The Iranian attack targeted a remote mountainous area that serves as a refuge for militants from that Sunni extremist group, which claimed responsibility for an attack last December that left 11 Iranian border guards dead in the town of Rask. The Ayatollah regime's broader offensive campaign also hit multiple targets in neighboring Iraq and Syria. The latter in response to the deaths of almost a hundred people at a ceremony on January 3 in Kerman in the largest attack in the history of the Islamic Republic. Pakistan's initial reaction was diplomatic.
The government of the interim prime minister Anwar ul Haq KakarThe party present at the Davos Forum recalled its ambassador in Tehran this Wednesday, but at the same time warned of “serious consequences” for violating its sovereignty and “reserves the right to respond.” Tensions on both sides of the border are not new, but the usual trend in recent years as a result of the Jaish al-Adl insurgency. Both accuse each other of turning a blind eye to their militants.
Who is behind Jaish al-Adl?
Jaish al-Adl is also known as the Army of Justice a group considered terrorist by Iran based in Pakistan. Founded in 2012 by militant Abdolrahim Mullahzadeh aka Salahuddin FarooquiThe organization seeks independence for Iran's southeastern East Sistan province, home to a large community of Sunni Muslims, a Shia-controlled minority in the Islamic Republic, and southwestern Balochistan, from where it denounces discrimination by the Pakistani state.
Most of its fighters, who live on both sides of the border, are remnants of the Sunni militant group Jundullah, or Soldiers of God, which was dismantled by Iranian security forces more than a decade ago after its leader was captured and executed by hanging. Abdolmalek Rigi. Jundullah, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, unsuccessfully attempted to attack Iran's then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
After Rigi's death, the group split into several branches. Iran accuses Israel and the United States, as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, of financing the activists who led to this an extensive list of attacks against Iranian targets. Jaish al-Adl attacks Shiite security forces, officials and civilians through ambushes, assassinations, raids, hit-and-runs, kidnappings and suicide bombings.
The group has light and small-caliber weapons and various devices in its arsenal improvised explosives such as suicide vests and car bombs, according to US intelligence reports. Its fighters use “swarm and dispersal guerrilla tactics” to attack border posts and transport convoys.
Pakistani authorities insist the group has no organized presence in the province or elsewhere, but acknowledge that some militants may have such a presence hidden in remote areas of Balochistan, the country's largest province, marked by decades of uprisings. In this area, which is rich in oil and mineral resources, separatists and nationalists denounce Islamabad's discrimination.
The Iranian action took place in a particularly sensitive context for Pakistan due to political instability and poor economic conditions. But Jaish al-Adl militants appear to have responded. The group claimed responsibility for the murder this Wednesday Hossein Ali JavdanfarColonel in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
