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By Saeed Shah and Benoit Faucon/Wall Street Journal
Islamabad, January 16: Iran hit a jihadist group in Pakistan with a missile and drone strike Tuesday, according to Iranian state media, as a series of conflicts continue to spread across the Middle East in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The target of the unusual attack inside Pakistan was a militant group, Jaish al-Adl, in Pakistan’s remote western province of Balochistan, which has a long border with Iran. Islamabad condemned the attack, which it said had killed two children and injured three.
The strike came after Iran said Monday that it had launched ballistic missiles at targets in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of some of their officers and allies and at a militant target in Syria.
Tehran is in an indirect confrontation with Israel and the U.S., in response to the Gaza war, working with a network of regional allied groups. It is also defending against attacks against its regional allies and attacks at home—including a bombing this month in the Iranian city of Kerman claimed by a branch of the Islamic State group which killed around 100 people.
“Iran knows it is on the edge of the abyss,” said an Iranian official. “So it is only taking calculated risks and keeping the regional conflict contained.”
Tehran has long complained about Jaish al-Adl’s presence on Pakistani soil, an allegation denied by Islamabad. Iranian state media reported that the group’s training center and homes were struck Tuesday in Pakistan. Relations between Pakistan and Iran are uneasy but not hostile. Islamabad privately says that some groups that attack inside Pakistan are based in Iran.
“This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty is completely unacceptable and can have serious consequences,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday. “Pakistan has always said terrorism is a common threat to all countries in the region that requires coordinated action.”
Jaish al-Adl is aiming to separate Iran’s mostly Sunni eastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan from the rest of the Shiite-dominated country. Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for an attack on a police station in Sistan-Baluchistan last month that killed at least 11 Iranian security personnel. At the time, Iran’s interior minister threatened a response.
There are ethnic Baloch minorities on both sides of the border. In Pakistan’s Balochistan, the authorities are fighting multiple insurgencies and don’t have full control of the territory.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took the rare step on Monday of launching strikes out of Iran into Syria, despite having its own military presence there. The Iranian paramilitary force said it had fired four ballistic missiles at Islamic State targets from Khuzestan in southwest Iran toward Idlib, a rebel-held enclave in northern Syria.
Idlib, while not under Islamic State control, has long hosted its leaders, many of which have been killed over the years in Western strikes. Islamic State’s Afghan branch trained in Idlib before carrying out the Kerman attack this month, Mohammad Sheltuki, an Iranian expert on defense issues, told state television. Iranian state TV showed what it said were Islamic State-controlled buildings reduced to rubble but gave no details on casualties.
Iran’s IRGC also launched ballistic missiles Monday at what they claimed were Israeli spy bases in Erbil, Iraq, in retaliation for the killing of some of their officers and allies, according to an IRGC statement carried by Iranian state media. In recent weeks, Israel has allegedly killed a top Guard adviser in Syria and senior members of Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon. Israel hasn’t commented on the strikes.
Iraqi Kurd officials, who have denied any Israeli intelligence presence in Erbil, said the IRGC had struck a private home, killing five civilians. The strike was near the local U.S. Consulate, but no American facilities were affected, according to U.S. officials. The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment.
“The attack on terrorists in Idlib and the Mossad headquarters in Erbil was a response to the terrorist explosion in Kerman and the martyrdom of IRGC guards in Syria,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force who oversaw the strikes, told conservative news agency Tasnim.
Iranian officials and advisers said the strikes were a way to respond to domestic pressure over the killing of IRGC officers in Syria by Israel without entering a direct fight with Israel and the U.S.
Aresu Eqbali contributed to this article.
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Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.cdm
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-strikes-jihadist-group-in-pakistan-as-middle-east-conflicts-spread-29640f00?st=r4tv5ga3adqw4z9&reflink=desktopwebshare_pe
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