Paper no. 2149	24.02.2007
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD OF IRAN:"ET TU MUSH!"- INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO. 197   By B.Raman In a report from Tehran on February 18,2007, the DPA, the German news agency, reported as follows:"Iran has summoned the Pakistani Ambassador to Tehran over the recent bombings in Zahedan in south-east Iran, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said Sunday. 11 people were killed and more than 30 injured after a bomb planted in a car went off last Wednesday in Zahedan and hit a bus belonging to the paramilitary revolutionary guards (IRGC). The victims mainly belonged to the administrative staff of the IRGC. Also on Friday a percussion bomb exploded on a road in Zahedan next to a girls' school and unfinished residential complexes without causing any casualties. The radical Sunni group Jundallah (God's Brigade), which claimed responsibility for both attacks, is believed to have infiltrated Iran from Pakistan, which borders Iran in the south-east. The Iranian press has criticized Pakistan for becoming the backyard for terrorists infiltrating Iranian soil. The spokesman said in a press conference in Tehran that Iran and Pakistan have agreed to form a committee for improving border security. Hosseini said that several suspects have been arrested in connection to the bombings and according to their confessions, 'aliens' were involved in the incidents. Tehran has accused the United States and Britain of using radical Sunni groups like Jundullah for sowing discord between Iran's Muslim Shiite majority and the Sunni minority. Zahedan, located in the Sistan-Baluchistan province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, is mainly a centre for drug-trafficking. A large number of IRGC anti-narcotic forces are stationed in the Sistan-Beluchistan province and frequently clash with not only local but also Afghan and Pakistani drug traffickers who try to smuggle drugs via Iran to European markets. " 2. On February 16, 2007, the Reuters reported as follows: "Iran has arrested some 65 men suspected of being behind a deadly bombing that killed members of the elite Revolutionary Guards in a south-eastern border province, the student news agency ISNA said on Friday. It quoted the local police chief as saying the suspects had clear links to U.S. and British intelligence services. The claim comes at a time when the United States has accused Iranian groups of involvement in the war in Iraq. Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted an unnamed official on Friday as saying those behind the bombing had received training from the United States to create ethnic divisions in Iran. "I joined Jundallah three months ago ... and entered Iran from a neighboring country to carry out terrorist acts. I received trainings in Pakistan," IRNA quoted the key suspect Nasrollah Shamsi Zehi as saying. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency also quoted an unnamed official as saying that "explosives used by the terrorists in Zahedan were American made." The upsurge in unrest in Sistan-Baluchestan also follows violence in Iran's oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan, which has a minority Arab population. " 3. Those, who have been reading my articles on Pakistan-Iran-US since 2002, would not have been surprised by the Iranian allegations against Pakistan. I have been pointing out how he has been playing a double game like a gifted commando--- helping Iran acquire a military nuclear capability and helping the US to destroy that capability--- and getting lollipops from both. Gas from Iran and dollars and military goodies from the US. 4.In an article on Iran written by me in June 2003, which was carried by the South Asia Analysis Group  (SAAG)   (http://www.saag.org/papers8/paper719.html ) as well as by Asia Times Online on June 21, 2003, I had stated as follows:  " Effective covert action demands bases from which one could relay broadcasts and telecasts, disseminate printed propaganda, interact with dissident elements inside Iran without their having to travel to the West for this purpose, and train the surrogates in clandestine operations.  The CIA was hoping to use Iraqi and Pakistani territory for this purpose.  The deterioration in the internal security situation in Iraq has ruled out the use of its territory for the present. As a result, the importance of Pakistan has increased many fold in the CIA's perception. That is why the CIA strongly advised its Government to tickle the ego of Gen. Pervez Musharraf by receiving him in Camp David instead of in Washington and to shower him with the kind of honours no other Pakistani leader had received before---not even Zia-ul-Haq during the Afghan war of the 1980s. Since his last bilateral visit to the US in February last year, Musharraf has already ordered his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to covertly collaborate with the US intelligence agencies for the collection of intelligence about Iran.  It was unhappiness over this, which led to the resignation of Abdul Sattar, his Foreign Minister, ostensibly on health grounds. During the recent visit of Lt. Gen.Ehsanul Haq, Director-General of the ISI, to Washington, the subject of expanding this co-operation was reportedly further discussed. According to unconfirmed reports, James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA under Clinton, who has been acting as adviser to the Iranian monarchist groups, had called on Haq. This subject is expected to be on the top of the agenda for Musharraf's talks with Bush.  It is said that the CIA is interested in re-activating the Sunni Balochis in Iran against the Teheran regime and in shifting the MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq) dregs presently in Iraq to Pakistani Balochistan so that they could operate from there without causing embarrassment to the US occupation authority in Baghdad. Pakistani sources claim that while Musharraf may be inclined to allow the relaying of clandestine broadcasts and telecasts from Pakistani territory, he is against re-activating the Iranian Balochis which could boomerang on Pakistan's Balochistan and shifting the MEK dregs to Balochistan.  The Bush Administration is expected to dangle before him the lollipop of another debt write-off and F-16 aircraft if he went the whole hog in becoming the USA's covert frontline ally against Iran. The unhappiness over Musharraf's perceived willingness to collaborate with the USA against Iran is not confined to Pakistan's Foreign Office. Some Army officers such as Gen. Mohammad Aziz, a fundamentalist Kashmiri officer belonging to the Sudan tribe of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), (since retired) have also reportedly expressed their misgivings during discussions at the GHQ.  Aziz is presently Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee. They have also referred to the dangers of its causing alienation amongst the Shias in the Armed Forces. The Pakistan Air Force, in particular, has a large number of Shias at the lower and middle levels in the cadres of technicians. It is reported that he has reassured them by projecting that his present intelligence collaboration with the USA was against the terrorists operating from Iranian territory and not against the Iranian regime. He has described it as part of the war against international terrorism by the international coalition under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373.  He has reportedly reiterated that he would not agree to any other co-operation, which may be directed against the clerical regime. But, their concerns have not subsided.  They have noted that since the recent visit of Ehsanul Haq to the US, Musharraf's enthusiasm for a gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan has decreased. Musharraf wants to go down in Pakistan's history as the leader who achieved Pakistan's objective in Jammu & Kashmir.  If he calculates that by collaborating with the USA to bring down the Teheran regime, he might achieve this objective, he may not hesitate to do so. New Delhi and Teheran should be prepared for surprises." 5.  In the same article, I wrote further as follows: "Thus, one finds:  Pakistan clandestinely helping Iran before 2002 in its efforts to acquire a clandestine military nuclear capability in return for Iranian funding of its own military nuclear programme. Since February, 2002, Pakistan has been clandestinely collaborating with the USA in its efforts to destroy Iran's nuclear capability through a joint operation to be mounted by the US and Israel with intelligence  supplied by  Pakistan. Pakistan clandestinely helping Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and  the International Islamic Front (IIF) and the Taliban in acquiring a capability for terrorism  for using them against India before 9/11. After 9/11, it has been openly and clandestinely helping the USA in its operations against them in return for handsome economic and military packages. Clandestinely helping the survivors of these organisations to re-organise their capability for continued use against India. Clandestinely helping the Saddam Hussein regime in transfering the evidence of its WMD programmes to Pakistan for safe custody. Clandestinely co-operating with the USA for strengthening its puppet Alawi regime in Baghdad and for mobilising the Iraqi diaspora in other countries to register themselves as Iraqis and participate in absentee ballotting in support of  Alawi in order to get him a respectable total just it had mobilised the Pashtun votes on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in support of Hamid Karzai in return for a US $ 1.3 billion military package from the US. All this may sound unbelievably perfidious. But, that is Musharraf in a nutshell. That is how he has survived and prospered throughout his career. He is now ostensibly co-operating with the US against Al Qaeda. Don't be surprised if he is clandestinely helping Al Qaeda against the US in Iraq in return for its promise to later get J & K for him. " (Citation from my June, 2003, article ends). (The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai.. E-Mail: itschen36@gmail.com)
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