Following Iran’s strikes on a terrorist group in Balochistan, security and foreign affairs experts have said that the question needs to be asked why neighbours of Pakistan are blaming it for harbouring terrorists and underlined that the attack is a very important message that Tehran has sent.
Sushant Sareen, a foreign affairs expert and Senior Fellow, ORF, said that it is not just Iran but India and Afghanistan have constant complaints against Pakistan. He said even China, otherwise an ally of Islamabad, has concerns about the presence of militants and Uyghur terrorists in Pakistan.
“I think the question that really needs to be asked is why is it that virtually every neighbour of Pakistan is blaming it for harbouring terrorists? Iran was actually attacking a notorious terrorist group. Iran has a problem with Pakistan and claims that Pakistan is harbouring terrorists. In fact, Afghanistan is blaming Pakistan for harbouring Daesh. India has constant complaints against Pakistan. China also has concerns about the presence of militants and Uyghur terrorists in Pakistan,” Sareen ..
“So clearly, one is this question that Pakistan has become a hub of terrorism in the region. Now, Iran has attacked them because I think partly the threshold of tolerance was crossed in the attack in Kerman…So Iran has been wanting to lash out for a fair bit of time. Just yesterday itself, they also launched attacks in Iraq and Syria…But nevertheless, they did attack another country, albeit in somewhat ungoverned spaces, although Erbil in Iraq is not exactly ungoverned.”
Iran launched air strikes on Tuesday at the headquarters of a terrorist group opposed to Tehran with drones and missiles in Pakistan, in which two “important headquarters” of Jaish al-Adl in Pakistan were “destroyed,” Al Arabiya News reported citing Tasnim news agency.
“The attack in Pakistan, I think, is a very important message that the Iranians are sending, that they will not allow the boxing of Iran through these terrorist organizations or para-state groups, something which Iran itself has been accused of doing through its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. Iran has also been accused of the same, but Iran does not want the same to happen to it. And I think there is a sense in Iran that it’s being encircled and it wants to break out of that encircle ..
He said Pakistan dispensation already has three fronts open – against India and Afghanistan and against Imran Khan – “and now they will have another front against Iran”.
“I think Iranians have calculated that the Pakistanis would not want to open a new front because Iran has a lot of assets inside Pakistan. And if they want, they have the potential to create a lot of trouble in Pakistan. So I think the Pakistanis will also be very careful, and the Pakistanis will probably simply underplay the magnitude of what has happened,” he said.
“Some of it you can already make out from the Pakistmedia, which is focusing on violations of airspace and not on the fact that missiles and drones have been fired. And it’s a major escalation. It’s really an attack on Pakistani soil. They’re not focusing on that. They’re talking about violations of airspace as though a plane has crossed a certain red line and then gone back. So they seem to be playing it down,” he noted.