Brian M Downing
[T]here is no such thing as an independent terrorist group and there never has been. [A]ll terrorism is the product of one or another regional powers meddling in the affairs of its neighbors. – former Iranian president Bani Sadr.
Iran’s southeastern region is home to a restive Baloch population. The Balochs are Sunnis and resent Shia dominance of national affairs in Tehran and control over local gas fields. Separatist routinely attack IRGC positions. The troops near Zahedan are the most recent victims.
The government is livid. Over the years, Iran has witnessed dozens of bombings and assassinations, including several nuclear scientists, missile sites, and perhaps most famously the Parchin IRGC base. Outside observers believe most attacks had foreign backing. Tehran is certain of it.
A Baloch group called Jaish al-Adl has taken credit for the Zahedan attack, but who supported it from abroad? Retaliation will come, but where?
Israel
Iranian-Israel relations waned as Tehran’s influence rose with Hisbollah, a group that emerged during Ariel Sharon’s occupation of Lebanon in the 80s. Relations further declined when the US destroyed Saddam’s army in 1991and Israel no longer needed an ally against Iraq.
As concern with a nuclear weapons program grew, Israel supported Iran’s Kurds and helped the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. Today, Israel, the US, and Saudi Arabia assert, with little evidence, that Iran is still building nuclear weapons, despite the JCPOA. The three powers are determined to bring regime change to Iran, if not fragment it along ethnic lines.
Mossad may have helped Jaish al-Adl in yesterday’s attack. Its reach after all is considerable. However, Mossad is more likely concentrating on Kurdish and Arab separatists in Iran’s northwest and west, far from the Baloch region.
Saudi Arabia
A head of Saudi intelligence once admitted his organization was far better at writing checks for clandestine operations than executing them. Saudi Arabia has in the past underwritten Baloch groups that attacked Iranian government assets. Operations were based across the border in Pakistan, a country that has long benefited from Saudi coffers and supported a slew of terrorist organizations, including the anti-Shia Lashkr-e Jhangvi and a predecessor of Jaish al-Adl – Jundallah.
Pakistan choked off Saudi support to separatists inside Iran a decade ago. In part because of Iran’s vociferous criticism, in part because Pakistan has its own Baloch separatists. Aid to Baloch separatists in Iran would only help kindred groups in Pakistan.
But Saudi-Iranian tensions have increased sharply in recent years and Saudi payments to Pakistan might have as well. The Pakistani generals might be looking the other way again. They may also be irritated by rising Iranian influence in Afghanistan – the Tajiks in the north and even the Taliban in the south.
ISIL
As its territory in Iraq and Syria shrinks to nothing, ISIL has been looking to Afghanistan as a new base. It has high hopes of coalescing numerous militant groups there into a coherent army. The Taliban is the largest of these groups but Baloch separatists on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border also figure in ISIL’s plans.
A noted expert on Afghanistan, Antonio Giustozzi, reports that Saudi intelligence is funding ISIL’s local affiliate, IS-Khorasan. Riyadh hopes to bring IS-K under its wing and channel the group’s deadly energies into Iran. IS-K and Saudi Arabia have common ground. They both loathe Shiism and resent Iran’s intervention in Syria.
Saudi support for a joint operation by IS-K and Jaish al-Adl is possible but the latter does not share the former’s vision of a caliphate in Central Asia and likely wants to avoid the opprobrium of cooperating with an ISIL affiliate. Nonetheless, intelligence operations have very strange bedfellows and not every actor shows its true flag.
The US
Rumors have long claimed US support for Baluch separatists inside Iran, though little evidence has surfaced. A new administration – one determined to gravely weaken Iran and unbound by precedent or norms – may have begun support. The US of course has military and intelligence personnel along the Afghan-Iran border, where an outcast Baloch population ekes out a living.
The US has been observing increased Iranian support to the Taliban over the last few years and the base of support is the IRGC’s Zahedan base, where Jaish al-Adl struck yesterday.
IRGC retaliation
Shortly after an Arab separatist group struck a military parade in western Iran last September, Tehran blamed Saudi Arabia but fired missiles into ISIL positions in eastern Syria. Another strike on ISIL in eastern Syria is possible but the group’s territory has shrunk considerably since last September.
Iran must retaliate for Zahedan in a manner that demonstrates power abroad and at home. But it must be mindful that an injudicious response will alarm world capitals at a time when they are at least somewhat sympathetic to it and at odds with the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, US positions in Afghanistan might be likely targets.
© 2019 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.