28th February 2007
The CIA has launched operations to
destabilize Iran in the east (Sistan and Baluchistan)
with the help of Pakistan’s ISI and in the west
(Khuzestan) with MI6.
Immediately after the director of
national intelligence, John Negroponte, told Congress on
Jan. 11 that Al Qaeda had established itself in
Pakistan, a furious Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf
dispatched the boss of the country’s Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI) agency, lieutenant-general Ashfaq
Pervez Kiani, to Washington.
According to diplomatic sources
in Islamabad, Kiani met with Negroponte himself as well
as with CIA director Michael Hayden and national
security adviser Stephen Hadley. A few days later he was
joined by the head of ISI’s anti-terrorist division,
lieutenant-general Muhammad Zakki. The latter is handler
to several extreme Sunni movements in Pakistan belonging
to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI).
The two ISI bosses reached an
agreement with the Americans: they would launch
destabilization operations in the Iranian province of
Sistan and Baluchistan, where Sunnis form the majority
of inhabitants, by inciting a number of violent groups
like the Jundallah to stage attacks, particularly
against the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdarans).
Jundallah claimed responsibility
for a bomb attack against a bus at Zahedan, capital of
Baluchistan, on Feb. 14 that killed 11 Pasdarans in what
was the first strike in the Pakistani offensive. It was
indeed interpreted by Tehran as a Pakistani operation
because Iran reacted immediately by rounding up hundreds
of Baluchis (a suspected perpetrator was hanged in
public on Feb. 19). Then, on Feb. 18, a suicide bomber
blew up a courtroom in Quetta, capital of the Pakistani
part of Baluchistan, killing 16.
The same day the Pakistani envoy
to Tehran was called in to the foreign ministry to be
told: “We’re in a position to destabilize your country
if you continue to work with the Americans.”
Backed by British troops deployed
in southern Iraq, MI6 and British special forces carried
out an attack against the Revolutionary Guards
University in the center of Ahvaz, the capital of the
Iranian part of Khuzestan, on Feb. 7. The British have
been infiltrating the region since 2003 with the help of
Sunni Arabs who are in the majority in the area. The
Feb. 7 operation, like others in Dezful (which houses a
major military base) and in the oil port of Abadan, were
hushed up by the Iranian authorities.
American
policy planners can also count on the possibility of
activating some 5,000 members of the People’s
Mudjihideen, which fiercely opposes the Iranian regime
and trains under the protection of the US Army at the
Ashraf base some 120 km north of Baghdad.
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