Is
The Bush Administration
Behind The Bombings In Iran?
By Peter Symonds
18 February, 2007
World
Socialist Web
Two
bombings this week in Zahedan in southeastern Iran are the latest in
a series of incidents involving armed opposition groups based among
the country’s ethnic minorities. The most recent attacks again
raise questions about the activities of the US military and CIA inside
Iran as the Bush administration intensifies its preparations for war.
The first blast killed at
least 11 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC) who were travelling in a bus from their housing compound to a
military base. After forcing the bus to stop, the attackers triggered
explosives packed in a car. Another 31 people were injured in the explosion.
A further bombing, followed by sustained clashes between police and
an armed group, was reported yesterday.
Jundallah, a Sunni extremist
group based among Iran’s Baluch minority, claimed responsibility
for the Wednesday bombing. Iranian police have already rounded up some
65 people allegedly connected to the organisation, along with explosives
and weapons. Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province,
which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and is home to Iran’s estimated
1-2 million ethnic Baluchis.
According to provincial police
chief Brigadier General Mohammad Ghafari: “A video seized from
the rebels confirms their attachment to opposition groups and some countries’
intelligence services such as America and Britain.” An unnamed
Iranian official told the Islamic Republic News Agency yesterday that
one of those arrested had confessed that the attack was part of US plans
to provoke unrest in Iran. “This person who was behind the bombing
confessed that those who trained them spoke in English,” he said.
The Iranian authorities have
provided no definitive proof of US or British involvement with Jundallah.
Neither the video nor any further evidence has been released. However,
the attack on the IRGC bus took place amid a propaganda campaign being
waged by the Bush administration accusing the IRGC’s Quds Force
of arming anti-US insurgents in Iraq. President Bush has vowed to break
up alleged Iranian networks and authorised the US military to kill or
capture Iranian agents.
US officials insist that
American forces are targetting Iranian agents inside Iraq, not in Iran
itself. No more credibility should be placed in these denials than in
US claims that it has no plans for attacking Iran. Over the past year,
the Bush administration has boosted its funding for “regime change”
in Iran, including support for Iranian opposition groups. Moreover,
there are growing signs that Washington is taking an active interest
in exploiting unrest among Iran’s numerous ethnic minorities and
may be covertly assisting armed groups such as Jundallah.
An article in the latest
issue of the Washington Quarterly entitled “Iran’s ethnic
tinderbox” noted: “According to exiled Iranian activists
reportedly involved in a classified US research project, the US Department
of Defense is presently examining the depth and nature of ethnic grievances
against the Islamic theocracy. The Pentagon is reportedly especially
interested in whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation
along the same kinds of fault lines that are splitting Iraq and that
helped to tear apart the Soviet Union with the collapse of communism.”
Veteran US journalist Seymour
Hersh, who has many contacts in the American intelligence establishment,
published several articles in the New Yorker last year pointing to US
activities inside Iran. In an article last November entitled “The
Next Act: Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or
more?” he wrote:
“In the past six months,
Israel and the United States have also been working together with a
Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan.
The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran,
I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon
civilian leadership, as ‘part of an effort to explore alternative
means of applying pressure on Iran.’ The Pentagon has established
covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri and Baluchi tribesmen and has
encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in
northern and southeastern Iran.”
Opposition to Tehran
Various opposition parties
and organisations exist among Iran’s ethnic minorities that have
legitimate grievances about the anti-democratic methods used not only
by the current theocratic Shiite regime, but by the previous US-backed
Shah Reza Pahlavi to suppress dissent. Such groups not only point to
religious, language and ethnic discrimination, but to economic neglect.
Most Baluchis, for instance,
belong to the Sunni Islamic sect—a minority in predominantly Shiite
Iran. The province of Sistan-Baluchistan is one of the most economically
backward in the country. Large areas are mountainous or desert, and
Iranian security forces have fought a long-running war to halt smuggling
and drug running across the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unemployment
is estimated to be 30-50 percent, which is high even by Iranian standards,
and poverty is widespread.
Jundallah is a shadowy organisation
formed in 2003 and led by a 23-year-old, Abdulmalak Rigi. Iranian officials
allege that it has links with Al Qaeda but have provided no proof. Even
if true, such a connection does not preclude the group’s involvement
with US intelligence, which was responsible for helping to establish
Al Qaeda in the 1980s in its holy war against the Soviet-backed regime
in Afghanistan. Jundallah almost certainly has connections with armed
Baluch separatists fighting in Pakistan.
Over the past year, Jundallah
has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Iranian officials
and security forces. In an interview with the British-based Telegraph
in January 2006, spokesman Abdul Hameed Reeki boasted that the group
had 1,000 trained fighters. While denying any connection with the US
or Pakistani governments, he made a definite appeal for Western aid.
Jundallah fighters, he declared, had the dedication needed to defeat
the Iranian army—particularly if some help were to prove forthcoming
from the West.
Reeki’s appeal reflects
the venal calculations of sections of the Baluch elite who, like their
counterparts among Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish, Arab and other minorities,
are considering the potential benefits of aligning themselves with Washington
in a military conflict with Iran. US support for such layers has the
potential to create an even greater catastrophe than in neighbouring
Iraq, where the American-led invasion has triggered an escalating sectarian
civil war.
In its comment on Wednesday’s
bombing, Stratfor certainly considered “this latest attack against
IRGC guards was likely carried out by armed Baluch nationalists who
have received a boost in support from Western intelligence agencies.”
The think tank, which has close connections to US intelligence and military
circles, went on to point to an escalating covert war being waged by
the US and Israel to destabilise the Iranian regime.
“The US-Iranian standoff
over Iraq has reached a high level of intensity. While the hard-line
rhetoric and steps toward negotiations absorb the media’s attention,
a covert war being played out between Iran on the one side, and the
United States and Israel on the other, will escalate further. While
Israel appears to be focused on decapitating Iran’s nuclear program
through targeted assassinations, the United States has likely ramped
up support for Iran’s variety of oppressed minorities in an attempt
to push the Iranian regime towards a negotiated settlement over Iraq,”
Stratfor wrote.
Israel’s “targeting
assassinations” is a reference to the suspicious death last month
of top Iranian nuclear scientist Ardeshir Hassanpour. In an article
entitled “Israeli Covert Operations in Iran”, Stratfor noted
that while the official announcement—a week after the scientist’s
death—claimed Hassanpour died of overexposure to radiation, the
details were murky. Citing “Stratfor sources close to Israeli
intelligence”, the article declared that “Hassanpour was
in fact a Mossad target” and pointed to allegations of Mossad’s
involvement in the killing of top Iraqi scientists during the 1980s.
While no proof has surfaced
of the direct involvement of American intelligence agencies in the latest
bombing in Zahedan, the US is certainly engaged in inflaming ethnic
and political opposition inside Iran. Stratfor offers the rather benign
interpretation that the purpose of such reckless and illegal activities
is simply to press Tehran to reach a negotiated settlement with the
US over its list of demands. Even if that were the case, the US military
build-up in the Persian Gulf, its propaganda campaign and tightening
economic restrictions against Iran—along with its covert activities
inside the country—all serve to heighten a conflict that could
rapidly spiral out of control.
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