Is U.S. behind Jundallah bombings in Iran?
Reza Aslan wonders if the U.S. isn't playing a role in terror attacks inside Iran:
In 2007, ABC News cited U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources as saying American officials had been secretly advising and encouraging Jundullah militants to carry out attacks against targets inside Iran. The following year, in 2008, Seymour Hershâ??s shocking New Yorker investigation revealed that the Bush administration had been funding covert operations inside Iran designed to destabilize the countryâ??s leadership since 2005. According to Hersh, these covert activities included support for Baluchi groups such as Jundullah. That same year, Pakistan's former army chief, General Mirza Aslam Baig, claimed to have firsthand knowledge that the United States was providing training facilities to Jundullah militants in Pakistan and southeastern Iran, specifically to sow unrest between the two neighboring countries.
Obviously the U.S. is no stranger to this kind of stuff (see Afghanistan circa 1980) but two caveats are in order. First, the sources quoted above are the long and short of Aslan's evidence that the U.S. is behind these attacks. Second, I'd like to think - really, really would like to think - that American policy makers wouldn't be so short-sighted as to fund a Sunni militant group in Pakistan (!) simply to knock off a few Revolutionary Guardsmen.
Update: This 2007 Daily Telegraph article reports that it's not a well-kept secret that the U.S. is using the group to stir up trouble in Iran:
Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now "no great secret", according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington who spoke anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.His claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, who said: "The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime."
Again, skepticism is warranted, but still you'd have to marvel at the incredible absurdity of such a policy, should it exist.
(AP Photo)
