by Mehlaqa Samdani
A brazen suicide attack in Iran’s restive Sistan-Baluchistan province targeting commanders of the elite revolutionary guards has once again served to raise regional tensions. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a Sunni extremist group, Jundullah (God’s Soldiers) based across the border in Balochistan.
Jundullah, an extremist Sunni group in exile has carried out numerous attacks against the government in Tehran and is known to have worked closely with Lashkhar-e-Jhangvi, also an anti-Shia terrorist organization operating out of southern Punjab.
While Iranian officials were quick to implicate the United States, Britain and Pakistan in the attack, some experts believe at this point the United States would not be interested in jeopardizing nuclear talks with Iran which started positively last week under the auspices of the IAEA.
On the other hand, there is speculation that Saudi Arabia is increasingly wary of Iranian dominance in the region, which has intensified recently due to developments in Yemen (where the Saudi-supported San’aa government has invited Iranian mediation after failing to crush the Houthi Shias). In addition, Riyadh has been actively trying to isolate Iran from the Arab world and is terrified at the prospect of seeing relations normalize between the US and Iran.
Meanwhile, Iran registered a strong protest with the Pakistani embassy in Tehran “despite some understanding between Iran and Pakistan over the activity of Jundallah inside Pakistan — Pakistan has been surrendering arrested anti-Iran terrorists to Tehran”.
Iran-Pakistan relations suffered a similar setback in May when Jundullah bombed a mosque in Zahedan, Sistan, killing numerous people. This took place soon after Iran and Pakistan had signed a preliminary agreement for the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline project against the wishes of the United States, that had favoured an alternative “Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline” which according to some experts is “the raison d'etre for US involvement in Afghanistan.
This spike in regional tensions following the attack on the revolutionary guards is certainly not favourable to those pushing for regional cooperation in resolving the current Afghan imbroglio.
Flickr photo by Mahi Teshneh used under a Creative Commons License
