ISLAMABAD, Oct 21 — Iran regularly blames the United States and Britain for its internal troubles. So, when a suicide bomber killed 42 people including some top officers in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards this weekend, Teheran’s vows of revenge against “the great Satan America and its ally Britain” were utterly routine.
Yet on this occasion Iran went much further, and accused neighbouring Pakistan of conniving in the terrorist attack.
Iran’s allegations seem far-fetched. Nevertheless, the spat is the first public indication of a trend which foreign intelligence services have predicted for years: the emergence of Pakistan as a strategic player in the Middle East, a counter-balance to a potentially nuclear-armed Iran. It is an ominous development which no Western government encourages, but nobody seems able to prevent.
Contrary to the official propaganda which portrays Iran as a monolithic, cohesive nation, only 51 per cent of the country’s population consists of ethnic Persians. And although the Shi’ite branch of Islam predominates, one in 10 Iranians is Sunni, including the Baluchis who are waging a low-level guerilla campaign against the central authorities.
The latest attack is the worst terrorist atrocity in years, but it conforms to a pattern. In 2005, a group of Iranian soldiers were massacred by the Baluchis and, more recently, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s motorcade came under fire at exactly the same spot where the suicide bomber struck last Sunday.
The culprits are, apparently, the Jundollah, or “Soldiers of God”, a Sunni group fighting for an independent “Baluchistan”. It is possible that the terrorists have accomplices in neighbouring Pakistan, where many Baluchis also reside. But it is highly unlikely that Pakistan’s government tolerates such activities, if only because the emergence of an independent Baluchistan will be a mortal threat to the existence of Pakistan itself.
Responding to the Iranian accusations, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Islamabad yesterday blamed the weekend attack on forces bent on spoiling bilateral relations. “But our ties are strong enough to counter these machinations,” the spokesman, Abdul Basit, told Agence France-Presse.
President Asif Ali Zardari has called his Iranian counterpart and “assured him of Pakistan’s full cooperation in the fight against terrorism”, Basit added.
A plausible explanation for Sunday’s attack is that the Jundollah took advantage of Pakistan’s notoriously porous borders, and found plenty of supporters among the one million refugees and displaced persons already residing in Iran.
The Iranian authorities are acutely aware of the looming danger. This is why responsibility for policing Iran’s Baluchi areas was recently transferred from the regular military to the crack Revolutionary Guards. Ironically, Iran has copied the American strategy in Afghanistan, by sponsoring a dialogue between local tribal chieftains in order to avoid further violence. But all these efforts appear to have come to naught, and the fear is that the Baluchis could become pawns in far bigger chess games.
The Arab states of the Middle East are increasingly alarmed by Iran’s sponsorship of Shi’ite movements throughout the region. This is a direct threat to the stability of Saudi Arabia, where Shi’ites account for 15 per cent of the population and happen to be concentrated in the key towns where the largest oil fields and refining facilities are located. Smaller Gulf states such as Kuwait or Bahrain — where the population is majority Shi’ite — are under an even greater threat.
For decades, Arab governments hoped that the US would be able to contain Iran’s growing regional influence. But since this has not happened, the Arabs may now be resorting to their own containment measures.
There is no evidence that any Arab government is currently supporting Iran’s Baluchi insurgency. However, the emergence of a Sunni separatist movement inside Iran serves the Arab states well: it is a warning that, if Iran continues to undermine Arab governments, it could find itself undermined at home.
Meanwhile, the courtship of Pakistan by many Arab countries for largely the same reasons is emerging into the open. When General Pervez Musharraf was the military ruler of Pakistan, his two political opponents — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — were frequently guests of the Saudi government. The Saudi intelligence services were closely involved in the deal under which Pakistan reverted to civilian rule. And Saudi Arabia is now Pakistan’s largest single financial donor.
It is clear what the Saudis want from this relationship. Should Iran succeed in developing nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia could have the option of buying nuclear weapons straight off the shelf — from Pakistan. The Middle East could then be divided between a Shi’ite bomb and a Sunni one, both facing each other in a dangerous stalemate.
Seen from this perspective, Iran’s current warning to Pakistan has little to do with Baluchi terrorism; instead, it represents a clear signal that Iran is determined to break the Saudi-Pakistani pincer movement.
The options facing the US remain bleak. Washington is not interested in a weak Iran, but has no control over what happens in Baluchi areas in both Iran and Pakistan.
The Americans are also keen to keep Pakistan focused on fighting the Taliban. But they cannot prevent the Pakistanis from being sucked into wider Middle-Eastern proxy games. And while Saudi Arabia remains a close US ally, the Saudis are already mapping out their alternative defence strategies.
So what seemed like another suicide bombing on the dusty borderlands between Pakistan and Iran may herald a major and far more dangerous realignment throughout the Middle East. — The Straits Times
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