Iran’s actions came amid widespread fears that the devastating war in Gaza could become a broader and deadlier regional conflict
Dinesh Dubey
The week began with Iran hitting its neighbours, Pakistan and Iraq, with missile strikes. It prompted strong denunciations from both countries and has raised fears that upheaval in the Middle East could spiral out of control. Although, Iran has largely been reputed as a smart player of proxy wars against the U.S. and Israel in the volatile region, this is the first time it has come out openly to retaliate against the alleged presence of anti-Iranian elements in both Iraq and Pakistan. To make the matters worse, within 48 hours of Iranian strike, Pakistan struck back to hit Sistan-Baluchistan area in Iran.
Since the war in Gaza began in October, Iran has used its proxy forces against Israel and its allies. It has been openly funding and training Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias in Syria and Iraq. The Iranian-backed Houthis have been disrupting global shipping by attacking vessels in the Red Sea, while Hezbollah has been launching strikes on northern Israel from Lebanon. Iraqi militias closely linked to Iran have targeted U.S. bases and camps in Iraq and Syria more than 130 times in the past three months.
But on January 16, it said its latest missile strikes had been in response to terrorist attacks within its borders. The missile strikes, nevertheless, raised tensions in a region where conflict has now touched at least five nations including Israel, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Pakistan.
The frenzy of conflict further compounded with Pakistan’s military response to Iran’s surprise precision attack. Although there have been routine tit-for-tat skirmishes between Iran and Pakistan on a shared border of roughly 560 miles between Pakistan’s Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan provinces, but this time both the countries used ballistic missiles, drones and war ammunition in their surgical retaliations.
Iraq was the first to report being hit in a strike in the Kurdistan region, which it said killed several people. Hours after the Iraqi government recalled its ambassador to Tehran and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad to protest the strike, Pakistan said it, too, had been hit by its neighbor.
The missile strike in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state, hit a remote mountainous region in Balochistan. Iran says it targeted Jaish Al-Adal (Army for Justice). The group, formerly known as Jundallah, has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the US. It operates in the Baloch areas of Iran and Pakistan, and blew up a bus full of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard personnel in 2019
The strike in Iraq which maintains close political and military ties with Iran, is truly surprising. The Iranian target was Erbil, the Kurdistan capital, around midnight and involved ballistic missiles and drones. Iraqi government officials said it had killed four civilians.
In both cases, Iranian officials said they were going after terrorists they accused of being behind recent attacks on its territory that have badly shaken Iranians. Early this month, suicide bombers killed about 84 people at a memorial procession for a revered Iranian military leader, and in December, an attack on a police station killed at least 11 officers. The Iraqi and Pakistani governments rejected Iran’s justifications.
The big question is that despite the existence of several channels of communication between Iran and Pakistan and Iran and Iraq, why Iranian leaders chose to directly attack the anti-Iran terrorists without taking the two neighbours in confidence. Besides, during it’s talks with regional players, Pakistan has always maintained that terrorism is a common threat to all countries in the region that required coordinated action, then why Iranians took recourse to this illegal act is beyond the comprehension of experts on regional stability issues.
Iran’s actions came amid widespread fears that the devastating war in Gaza could become a broader and deadlier regional conflict. Already, it has set off a low-level conflict between Iranian proxy forces and the United States and other Western powers.
The United States, Britain and France denounced the Iranian attack in Iraq and Pakistan, but China and Russia called for halting the hostilities while working for a peaceful solution to the bilateral conflict.
Both Iran and Pakistan are active members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a significant regional grouping of Central Asian republics and their neighbours blessed by Moscow and Beijing, which aims at promoting regional cooperation for peace and prosperity in the region. That’s one important reason why both Russia and China are interested in an instant de-escalation of a war-like situation between Tehran and Islamabad. Perhaps that’s one reason why Pakistan toned down its anti-Iran rhetoric and has proposed for a dialogue to resolve the crisis by agreeing to coordinate on a joint counterterrorism strategy with Iran.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, Iran has been sending conflicting signals about its general intentions in the region. Privately, Iranian officials have been saying they want to avoid a larger conflict. But they have also been making bullish public pronouncements about proxy military forces that the country is propping up in the region and their importance in keeping the pressure on Israel and its allies.
In addition to hitting Pakistan and Iraq, Iran in recent days has also struck Syria. The Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack on the Iranian memorial procession, has a presence in Idlib. So far, there has been no public objection from the Syrian government, which is closely allied with Iran.
India, in recent years, has developed strong relations with Israel on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt on the other. Although, India continues its traditional ties with Iran, it avoided to be siding with Iran against another friendly country in the Middle East.
Indian stand, therefore, has been a kind of reiteration of its principled stand of “zero-tolerance against all the acts of terrorism” and “ a nation’s rights to respond to any such acts in self-defence.” India didn’t make a pointed remark against Pakistan, but it’s obvious that Indian position is primarily guided by its own harrowing experiences of countering terrorist activities in Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab aided and abated by external forces.
—————————————————
