Iran has accused Pakistan, the US and the UK of being behind Sunday’s suicide bombing in Sistan-Baluchistan which killed five senior commanders of the country’s Revolutionary Guard along with 37 others. The accusation says more about the Iranian leadership’s view of the world than it does about realities on the ground.
Responsibility for the murders has been claimed by Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, a radical Sunni group with close ideological connections to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda. There is doubt that it was actually behind the attack. It has been involved in a campaign of violence in the province for a number of years. It carried out the May 29 suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in the provincial capital — Zahedan — in which 17 people died and also an attack in the same city in February 2007 in which a number of the Revolutionary Guard also died. The Iranian government does not dispute its involvement but because it sees the US as the enemy, that view colors all its other perceptions. As far as Tehran is concerned, all its enemies are one another’s friends; the Jundallah is therefore being supported by the Americans and the British —and their allies, the Pakistanis.
Accusing the Americans and the British — especially the British — of responsibility for any of the country’s problems has a long tradition in Iran. It goes back to long before the revolution, especially in the case of the British. Because of the traditional blaming, the British make convenient scapegoats — as was seen recently when the authorities accused both the US and Britain of being behind the mass protests following the June presidential elections.
The logic of that accusation was clearly lost on those who made it — that if the British and the Americans can get tens of thousands of Iranians onto the streets, then they must be a powerful force in the country. But they are not. The accusation about their involvement with the Jundallah is just as illogical. That they would be working hand in glove with a movement linked to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda stretches credibility too far.
As for the accusation that Pakistan is involved, that too makes no sense. Pakistan is in a life-and-death struggle with the Taleban; it is not going to refuse to collaborate with its friends and partners. In any event, it has no reason to want to destabilize Iran. It may well be that Jundallah’s leader is holed up across the border in Pakistani Baluchistan, although Islamabad denies it; it may be that elements of the Jundallah plotted Sunday’s outrage from a safe haven in Pakistan. But that does not make Pakistan responsible any more than Afghanistan is responsible for the activities of the Taleban in South Waziristan.
Trying to throw blame outside the country for the threat in Sistan-Baluchistan is not going to solve the problem. All it does is divert attention. The problem is an internal one and needs to be solved internally. The Jundallah is a violent and ruthless organization that should be crushed. After the May bombing, the Revolutionary Guard were tasked by the Iranian supreme leader with doing just that — although so far they have evidently failed. But there is a sense of resentment in Sistan-Baluchistan that enables the movement to thrive. Addressing that might calm matters.
Nuclear swap
EXCERPTS from an editorial that appeared in Tuesday’s Washington Post:
For now, at least, nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West have narrowed to an issue that was not even on the agenda a month ago: Iran’s possible export of most of its existing stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia and France, which would turn it into fuel for an Iranian research reactor. This is both a bad and a good development. It is bad because it diverts attention from Iran’s continuing refusal to comply with UN resolutions ordering it to cease uranium enrichment and from its failure to accept Western proposals even for a temporary freeze. But if Iran goes through with the agreement in principle announced by the Obama administration on Oct. 1, the tangible good would be the removal from Iran of most of the known raw material it could use to make a bomb — and a probable delay of one to two years in the West’s estimates of how quickly it could produce one.
It’s still unclear whether Tehran will go through with the deal in a timely fashion. According to International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed El-Baradei, talks on the arrangement in Vienna got off to a “good start” Monday; other reports were less positive. The discussions are supposed to cover technical matters and conclude in a couple of days. But some reports from Iran suggest that Tehran will back away from exporting its stockpile — a measure creatively proposed by the Obama administration after Iran asked to purchase fuel for the research reactor.
Administration officials rightly describe the uranium deal as a quick and clear test of Iran’s intentions. If the export takes place by the end of this year — the time frame fixed by the US and its allies for progress in the nuclear negotiations — the politically beleaguered regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will have demonstrated, at least, that it wants to lower tensions with the West and delay a full confrontation over its nuclear program. Conversely, if it reverses its position, or seeks to drag out the talks, then the administration will have a strong case for the adoption of new sanctions — one that will put its relationship with Russia and China to the test.
