Iran first welcomed #Taliban victory but assault on the #PanjshirValley changed #Iran. Iranian media falsely alleged #Pakistan military was assisting Taliban offensive, an allegation had earlier been made in hysterical clown show that is the #Indian media https://www.arabnews.pk/node/1931971#.YUo3sMOIEtw.twitter

by Zarrar Khuro

"Brinkmanship may be a hallmark of Iranian policy but it only works when you know for sure where the brink actually is"

If anyone can be accused of using proxy forces as an extension of foreign policy it is Iran, which has used sectarian militias operating under the aegis of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to project power and influence across the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon.

------

Instead, Ismail Khan fled to Iran after surrendering to the Taliban and the quick conclusion to the fighting meant that Iran would gain no strategic depth in Afghanistan the way it had in Iraq and beyond. But that alone cannot explain Iran’s ire toward Pakistan, which it likely sees as having gained influence at Tehran’s expense, and so we must cast a broader net and switch our view from geostrategy to geoeconomics and in particular the future trade routes that may crisscross this region.
Iran’s desire to become the primary trade route through which exports from Afghanistan, and eventually transit trade from Central Asia would reach the world has also seen a setback especially in the context of talks regarding operationalizing the transit trade agreement between Uzbekistan and Pakistan, which would see transit trade being shifted from Iranian ports to Pakistani ports. Not only is that bad news for Bandar Abbas, it’s also yet another blow to Iranian hopes to further develop the Chabahar port, a joint project between Tehran and New Delhi.
Chabahar had already been suffering from delays and had also been seeing declining volumes due to the pandemic. The Taliban takeover then, may prove to be the final nail in the coffin of this already-troubled project and the fate of the transit agreement signed by the Ghani government with India and Iran is also now uncertain. None of this is good news for a cash-strapped Iran.
Despite this, the targeting of Pakistan by Iranian media and officials does seem like a strategic miscalculation, given Iran’s preoccupations in the Middle East. Brinkmanship may be a hallmark of Iranian policy, but it only works when you know for sure where the brink actually is.

EH
@ejazhaider
FINALLY, ISPR comes up with a pro forma, perfunctory statement on the Kech attk, hours AFTER i wrote my analysis. but missing from all this is a simple fact: BLF, for years, has used Iran's soil for mounting attacks in southwest Balochistan. why are we afraid of that discussion?

https://twitter.com/ejazhaider/status/1486776348223979528?s=20

EH
@ejazhaider
in my public debate with
@mosharrafzaidi
i constantly favoured a proactive CT policy. why wait for attacks on our soil; why not take the war to the enemies in Afghanistan and Iran? i can tell you we have the capability; not sure if we have the balls.

EH
@ejazhaider
ps: are we more engrossed in the Islamabad power politics shit than securing our interests? as i said on
@ZarrarKhuhro
's programme last night, state with balls could take out Mohsin Fakhrezadeh south of Tehran. you wanna deal with Tehran, deal from a position of strength.

#Pakistan is coming down hard on #Iran! On his recent visit, Iran’s interior minister Ahmad Vahidi was given the message that we know [about the use of Iranian soil by #Baloch insurgents]. If there are more attacks, we will take decisive action. @TRTWorld https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/why-pakistan-is-coming-down-hard-...

The country’s overstretched patience with its southwestern neighbour is wearing thin over the Baloch insurgency.
In the dead of night on January 25, dozens of militants bearing advanced assault rifles and night-vision devices swooped down on a solitary paramilitary checkpost in Kech, some 180 km from Pakistan’s border with Iran, in the southwestern province of Balochistan. The sudden assault lasted for more than five hours, claiming the lives of 10 Pakistani troopers. The attackers reportedly fled to Iran.

The attack was later claimed by the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), one of the most lethal Baloch separatist groups stoking a decades-long armed struggle against the Pakistan Army, which operates out of southeastern Iran.

While relations between Iran and Pakistan have steadily deteriorated over cross-border militancy in the past few years, analysts assess that the sharp increase in terrorist attacks since last year, mainly in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, has put the country's security establishment on tenterhooks.

Three days after the attack in Kech, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency stumbled upon a surprising discovery in the backroom of a money exchange company in Karachi. They found a network funneling millions of rupees from "a foreign intelligence agency" to proscribed militant groups in the country. Thirteen employees were rounded up, and days later, a senior bureaucrat was arrested in connection with the raid.

While the foreign intelligence agency behind the racket was barely identified in press conferences and local media coverage, a senior security official, on condition of anonymity, confirmed to TRT World that it belonged to Iran.

Then, on February 2, a coordinated attack on the paramilitary Frontier Corps headquarters in the towns of Panjgur and Noshki — areas close to the Iran border and the Baloch-majority regions in Afghanistan, respectively —stunned the nation. It took the army three days to clear the sites of the suicide attackers who, it said, were trained in Afghanistan by the Indian intelligence.

On February 14, Iran’s interior minister Ahmad Vahidi arrived in Islamabad for a day-long visit with the Commander of the Iranian Border Guards, Brigadier General Ahmad Ali Goudarzi, among other high-ranking officials.

While Pakistani leadership hailed the historic “brotherly ties” with Iran, privately the delegation was given a stern warning: “He was given the message that we know [about the use of Iranian soil by Baloch insurgents]. If there are more attacks, we will take decisive action,” says the security official, who is privy to details of the meeting.

The tri-border region of Nimroz in Afghanistan, an ethnic Baloch-dominated province straddling Pakistan and Iran in the south, is notorious for its powerful smuggling rackets dealing in weapons, opium, and human trafficking. To its east is the Helmand province, where vast poppy fields feed the global opium trade. This is also the region, along with Kandahar to its east, that welcomed fleeing Baloch brethren when former President General Pervez Musharraf ordered a military operation against Baloch insurgents in 2006. Many Baloch separatist leaders coordinated attacks on Pakistani security personnel and Chinese investments in Balochistan during the Afghan war.

When the Taliban took Kabul last year, they launched a swift crackdown on Baloch refugees and handed over many dissidents to the Pakistani authorities. Many Baloch rebels had already gone into hiding after assassination attempts in Kandahar, allegedly ordered by Pakistani officials over the past two years.