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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Suicide Bomber Kills 2 Guards At South Iran Mosque
2012-10-20
[Jerusalem Post] Six others, including three children, injured at mosque near Pakistain border; same mosque was hit in 2010.

A jacket wallah killed two guards as he went kaboom!" outside a mosque in a restive southern province of Iran on Friday after being prevented from reaching worshippers inside, Iranian media reported.

The bomber set off his boom belt a few hundred meters (yards) outside the Imam Hossein mosque in the city of Chabahar, killing two members of the Basij militia that were on guard, Fars news agency reported.

Six others, including three children, sustained injuries in the kaboom, it said.

Chabahar is in Sistan-Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
 province, near the Pak border. It has a history of unrest, with the mainly Sunni Mohammedan population complaining of discrimination at the hands of Iran's Shi'ite Mohammedan authorities.

An attack by two suicide bombers at the same mosque in 2010 killed 39 people including women and kiddies during a religious ceremony.

The Sunni rebel group Jundollah, which says it is fighting for better rights for Sunni Mohammedans in Iran, grabbed credit for that attack, which it said was in Dire Revenge™ for the execution of its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.

The group is believed to be based in Pakistain and since 2003 has claimed a number of attacks and kidnappings inside Iranian territory.

In its most audacious attack, it targeted a meeting of Revolutionary Guards and tribal figures from Sistan-Balochistan in October 2009, killing six senior commanders and 29 others.

Iran says Jundollah has links to al Qaeda and has accused Pakistain, Britannia and the United States of supporting it to stir instability in its southeast. The three countries deny backing Jundollah.
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India-Pakistan
Pakistan, Iran jockey for influence after bombings
2010-12-23
[Dawn] As tension grows between Pakistain and Iran after a mosque bombing in Iran, Pakistain could find itself increasingly isolated as its western neighbour looks to increase its influence in the region, analysts say.

Jundollah, a Sunni Mohammedan jihad boy group Iran says is based in Pakistain's southwestern province of Baluchistan, grabbed credit for a Dec. 15 double suicide kaboom in the Iranian town of Chabahar that killed 39 people and maimed more than 100.

Iran has demanded Pakistain take action with Iran's diminutive President Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad calling this week on his Pak counterpart, Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari
... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who showed remarkably little curiosity about who actually done her in ...
, to arrest "identified terrorists" and hand them over to Iran.

Iran says Jundollah fighters find shelter in Pakistain.

Pakistain denies providing shelter for the group.

But in an echo of US demands regarding Taliban sanctuaries in northwest Pakistain, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee suggested that if Pakistain didn't act, Iran would.

Analysts say the strong words from Iranian officials add to growing international pressure on Pakistain to take stern action against beturbanned goons operating out of its territory.

"Iran is ... a major regional stakeholder in Afghanistan and a competitor of Pakistain there. It is therefore likely that Iran is now flexing its muscles on its eastern flank to showcase its regional rise," the intelligence firm STRATFOR said.

Pakistain and Iran have long jockeyed for influence in Afghanistan, with Pakistain supporting the ethnic Pashtun and Sunni Mohammedan Taliban and pre-dominantly Shi'ite Iran backing the Taliban's enemies in the old Northern Alliance of non-Pashtuns and some Shi'ite groups.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran's Jundallah threatens US over terror designation
2010-11-05
[Al Arabiya] Iran's Jundallah jihad boy group on Thursday slammed a U.S. decision to designate it as a terrorist organization and threatened to retaliate; meanwhile Iran welcomed the U.S. decision as a "step in the right direction."

"We condemn the (U.S.) Foreign Ministry's inclusion of Jundallah resistance movement's name in its terrorism list and we consider this as encouraging the regime in Tehran to commit further crimes," Jundallah said in statement obtained by AlArabiya.net.

The movement said it would respond against the U.S. move by causing it "problems and damages" in the strategic Baluchistan region, southeast of Iran, and across its borders with Afghanistan.

"The United States has always supported criminals and murderers, like Sharon and Zionists, and supports also criminals (In the Iranian regime) to advance its interests," the statement added."

The United States has had classified the main Iranian opposition movement, Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), as a terror organization since 1997 when the Clinton administration sought to placate the Iranian regime and change its policy.

"This shows that Iran is a friend of the United States," the statement added.

Iran has consistently accused the United States of supporting Jundallah, a charge the movement often rejected.

Tehran welcomed the U.S. decision to designate Jundallah as a terrorist group saying the move was a "step in the right direction."

"Fighting against terrorism is the responsibility of all nations, and the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran believes that classifying the terrorist group (Jundallah) in the list of terrorist organizations by the United States is a step in the right direction," said the front man of Foreign Affairs, Ramin Mehmanparast, according the Fars agency.

"Iran will evaluate the change in U.S. policy towards terrorist groups like Jundollah, Tondar (Monarchist), or PJAK," he added.

Jundallah claims to fights for the ethnic and religious rights of the Baloch who are Sunni Mohammedans. It was founded by Abdolmalek Rigi who was captured and hanged in Iran in June.

Jundallah said Riggi was captured in Afghanistan by the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and was transferred to Iran.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Soldiers killed by blast at Iran military base
2010-10-13
[Al Arabiya] Several Iranian soldiers were killed in an kaboom that rocked a military base in the western province of Lorestan on Tuesday, Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam TV reported.

The channel, quoting an unnamed military source, said that "some soldiers have been killed in the accidental blast" which took place in the Imam Ali military base, located outside the scenic provincial capital of Khorramabad.
Does that happen often in competent militaries?
State news agency IRNA had previously reported that several soldiers were maimed in the kaboom.

A blast at a military parade in late September killed 12 people and injured 80, in the city of Mahabad. Iranian authorities blamed it on "anti-revolutionary" gunnies backed by foreign enemies.

Days after that attack, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said they had killed about 30 people who were behind it.

Analysts have said attacks could raise pressure on President Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad, whose government has been plagued by political infighting and economic woes linked in part to foreign sanctions imposed due to Iran's disputed nuclear program.

No group grabbed credit for the blast in Mahabad, which occurred during an annual ceremony for the Iranian armed forces to commemorate Iran's 8-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

But several bands of Islamic bandidos hostile to the establishment are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the northwest, Baluch gunnies in the southeast and some Arabs in the southwest.

The Sunni Mohammedan Jundollah bully boy group, which Iran says has links to al-Qaeda, is the most active. It claimed a double suicide kaboom on July 15 which killed 28 people, including Revolutionary Guards.

Last week, five Iranians, including four members of the security forces, were killed and nine injured when gunnies opened fire on a police patrol in the capital of Iran's Kurdistan province, the scene of frequent clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Sunni Payback To The IRGC
2010-07-27
Autoedited by Rantburg
Late last week, two suicide kabooms in southeastern Iran reduced a mosque to rubble, leaving 27 dead and nearly 300 injured. The explosions were the work of Jundollah--"Soldiers of Allah"--a rebel Sunni group opposed to the Shiite-controlled regime in Tehran.

The Islamic Republic has always accused the United States of being Jundollah's paymaster. The leader of Tehran's government-controlled Friday Prayer even charged the U.S. with masterminding the attacks: "Since the U.S. has lost face in the case of Shahram Amiri [the Iranian nuclear scientist who allegedly spied for the U.S. against Iran] and the reputation of its intelligence has also become questionable, they wanted to divert attention from their defeat and disgrace through this crime."

The bombs sent a powerful message that Jundollah survived a major setback earlier this year when its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, was jugged and subsequently hanged on June 20. When the regime apprehended Rigi, the state media went out of their way to showcase the operation. Security teams surrounded a beaten Rigi with large, muscled balaclava-clad agents known as the "unknown soldiers of the Messianic Imam Mehdi" in an attempt to demonstrate the strength of the state against a feeble rebel on national television.

The twin explosions presented the opposite picture. Jundollah struck Iran's leadership on a highly symbolic day, as it was both the birthday of the prophet Mohammad's grandson (revered by Shiites as the ultimate martyr) and Revolutionary Guards Day on the official calendar. Jundollah claims that the victims were mostly high-ranking Revolutionary Guards busy celebrating the holiday at the mosque. The mosque was also located in the center of Zahedan, where there is maximum security. Now, it's Jundollah's turn to boast.

Unreported in the Western press is Jundollah's claim that, in addition to the bombings, it trapped and murdered a top Iranian regime informant in a separate operation. Collaborators and informants understood the warning: Cease cooperation with the Iranian government, or suffer the same fate.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the bombings, three members of Iran's parliament from the Southeast resigned. Their official justification was that the central government has been unable to provide security in the region. More likely, they are attempting to escape Jundollah's bloody campaign of Dire Revenge™.

Only one day before the Jundollah attacks, Iran's Interior Minister and Revolutionary Guard member Mostafa Najjar had declared peace in the Southeast thanks to Rigi's June execution. "The eastern regions of the country are absolutely calm," he said.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran arrests suspected mosque bombing accomplices
2010-07-25
Translated by Rantburg

[Pak Daily Times] Iran said on Saturday that it has arrested suspected accomplices of two boomers who attacked a Shia mosque in the restive southeast earlier this month killing at least 28 people. "Some of those who helped the boomers behind the Zahedan crime have been identified and some have been arrested," state news agency IRNA quoted deputy interior minister Ali Abdollahi as saying.

He did not specify how many were in custody. "It is evident to us that the people who carried out the terrorist attack in Zahedan's Jamia mosque were linked to the Rigi group," Abdollahi said, referring to the Sunni hard boy group Jundollah, whose long time leader Abdolmalek Rigi was executed in Tehran last month. Jundollah claimed the July 15 twin bombing in Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, which it said targeted members of the elite Revolutionary Guards. Police said that the day after the twin bombing they killed six "criminals" in Sistan-Baluchestan province and arrested 40 people for "creating disturbances" in Zahedan.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran blames West, Israel for deadly bombing
2010-07-18
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran blamed the West and Israel on Saturday for twin suicide bombings which killed at least 27 people, despite condemnation of the attack by the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.

Iranian police, meanwhile, arrested 40 people for "creating disturbances" in the southeastern city of Zahedan where the bombers struck on Thursday, the Mehr news agency reported.

"This blind terrorist act was carried out by the mercenaries of the world arrogance (the Western powers)," state television's website quoted Deputy Interior Minister Ali Abdollahi as saying.

"The agents of this crime were trained and equipped beyond our borders and then came into Iran," Abdollahi said.

"Those who planned this crime and equipped those who carried it out should know that they are responsible for this incident," he added.

Two suicide bombers killed at least 28 people, including elite Revolutionary Guards, at a Shiite Muslim mosque in the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

The Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah said it set off the bombs on Thursday, telling Al Arabiya television in an email it had carried them out in retaliation for Iran's execution in June of the group's leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.

"The group said the suicide attacks were carried out by Abdolbaset Rigi and Mohammad Rigi ... and warned of more operations to come," Al Arabiya said.

Jundollah says it fights for the rights of Iran's Sunni Muslim minority.
Tehran has long charged that Washington has provided support to the group as part of efforts to destabilize the Islamic regime by fomenting unrest among ethnic minorities in sensitive border areas.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Death toll from Iran mosque attacks rises to 26
2010-07-17
[Al Arabiya Latest] The death toll from twin suicide bombings at a Shiite mosque in heavily Sunni southeast Iran has risen to 26, a local lawmaker told IRNA news agency on Friday.

Hossein Ali Shahriari, parliamentarian from the city of Zahedan where the twin attacks occurred on Thursday, put the number of wounded at more than 300.

"This explosion has left 26 people killed and more than 300 wounded. The toll may increase further," Shahriari was quoted as saying by IRNA.

Among those killed were a members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Iran's deputy Interior Minister in charge of security Ali Abdollahi said.

IRNA said the second attack was so strong that "body parts were scattered around the Grand Mosque."

The Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah said it was behind the attacks, telling Al Arabiya TV in an e-mail that it had carried them out in retaliation for Iran's execution in June of the group's leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.

Rigi was hanged after being convicted of carrying out other deadly attacks. Jundollah says it is fighting for the rights of Iran's Sunni Muslim minority.

The suicide bombings took place near Zahedan's Grand Mosque, and Jundollah said they were carried out by relatives of Rigi and were aimed at a Revolutionary Guards gathering.

The group said the suicide attacks were carried out by Abdolbaset Rigi and Mohammad Rigi ... and warned of more operations to come.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran hangs top Sunni rebel Rigi: Report
2010-06-21
[Al Arabiya Latest] Abdolmalek Rigi, head of the Sunni rebel group Jundollah who waged a deadly insurgency in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, was hanged early Sunday, state news agency IRNA reported.

"After the decision of the Tehran revolutionary tribunal, Abdolmalek Rigi was hanged on Sunday morning in Evin prison," IRNA said.

It quoted a court statement as saying: "The head of the armed counter-revolutionary group in the east of the country ... was responsible for armed robbery, assassination attempts, armed attacks on the army and police and on ordinary people, and murder."

Rigi was captured in February while on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgystan. His hanging on Sunday comes less than a month after his brother Abdolhamid was hanged on charges of "terrorism".

A Tehran Revolutionary court sentenced Rigi to death and the Supreme Court upheld the sentence, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said.

Rigi led the shadowy Sunni militant group called Jundollah (Soldiers of God) that had waged a deadly insurgency in southeastern Iran killing civilians as well as military officials.

Iran says the group was backed by the United States.

IRNA, quoting the court statement, said Rigi's group was "responsible for the killing of 154 members of security forces and other innocent people and wounding of 320 people since 2003."

It said Jundollah was "linked to members of foreign intelligence services, including members from U.S. and Zionist regime's intelligence services under the cover of NATO."

It was also linked to intelligence services of some Arab countries and counter-revolutionary group People's Mujahedeen, the statement said.

Rigi himself was charged with forming the "terrorist group Jundollah which was fighting the Islamic republic."

"He collaborated and ordered 15 armed abductions, confessed to three murders, and ordered the murders of tens of citizens, police and military personnel through bombings and armed actions," the statement added.

IRNA said he had been sentenced to be hanged in front of the relatives of some of the victims of his attacks, but the report did not specify whether he was actually executed in their presence.

A new leader
Rigi's arrest was reportedly a spectacular operation, with Iranian warplanes forcing the flight carrying the militant from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan to land in Iran.

Soon after his arrest, the Jundollah group claimed it had appointed a new leader Muhammad Dhahir Baluch, the SITE monitoring agency reported.

According to SITE Jundollah said in its website posting: "Let the (Iranian) regime know that it will face a movement that is stronger and much more solid than ever before and one whose existence it has not been aware of.

"It will see what our believing heroes among our Baluch children can do to the occupiers, the aggressors and the unjust. The falsehood of the senior leaders of the regime will soon be exposed."

Jundollah says it is fighting Tehran's Shiite rule to secure rights for Sunni Baluchis who form a significant population in Sistan-Baluchestan.

A few days after Rigi's arrest Iranian state media alleged that the United States had offered to provide the militant aid to battle the Islamic regime.

"They (Americans) said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment," Rigi said in a taped statement broadcast on Iran's state-run English-language Press TV.

Tehran has long accused the group of being trained and equipped by American and British intelligence services as well as the Pakistanis in a bid to destabilize the government. Washington denies the charges.

Rigi's brother Abdolhamid was hanged in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, on May 24 in front of the families of the victims, state media had reported.

Abdolhamid was convicted of "Moharebeh" (armed opposition to the state) and being "corrupt on earth by membership in a terrorist group."

Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan is an impoverished area near Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bombings and clashes between security forces, ethnic Baluch Sunni insurgents and drug traffickers have increased in recent years in the area.
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India-Pakistan
Pakistan arrests three suspects in Iran bombing
2009-11-06
[Al Arabiya Latest] Pakistani security forces on Thursday arrested three Iranians suspected of planning a suicide attack in Iran's southeastern region last month which killed 42 people, officials said.

Mainly Shiite Iran says the Sunni rebel group Jundollah (God's Soldiers), which has claimed responsibility for the Oct. 18 attack, operates from across the border in Pakistan.

The attack in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province killed 15 Iranian Revolutionary Guards, including six senior commanders, and 27 others.

The ethnic Baluch men were arrested by the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary troops in a raid on Thursday in Turbat, a district in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province on the Iranian border, intelligence and paramilitary officials said.

"They are Iranian Baluch and are suspected to be involved in the planning of the suicide bombing in Iran last month," an intelligence official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. He gave no further details.

The arrests came two weeks after Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar visited Pakistan to demand it hand over Abdolmalik Rigi, the militant group's leader.

Pakistan has condemned the bombing and vowed to help Iran track down those responsible, but says Rigi is in Afghanistan, according to their information.

After the attack, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke on the telephone and stressed the need for cooperation in confronting and eradicating "criminal terrorists".

Pakistan launched a long-awaited offensive against militants in its northwest on Oct. 17 after a string of bomb and suicide attacks rocked the country, including one on the army's headquarters early that month.

Iran-Pakistan ties have generally been good recently, but tension has risen since Iran said the October attack would affect relations and some Revolutionary Guard commanders have said they should be able to pursue Jundollah in Pakistan.

Iran accuses the United States and Britain of backing Jundollah and has suggested it has links with Pakistani intelligence. Washington, London and Islamabad have all denied involvement.

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India-Pakistan
Pakistan frees 11 border-trespassing Iranians
2009-10-28
[Al Arabiya Latest] Pakistani authorities on Tuesday released 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guards detained a day earlier for trespassing into Pakistani territory, officials said.

The guards were arrested in the Mashkhel area on the border with Iran eight days after a suicide bomber killed 42 people, including 15 members of the Revolutionary Guards, in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province.

A Sunni Muslim group, Jundollah (God's soldiers), claimed responsibility for that blast and Iran said the group operated from Pakistan. On Tuesday last week, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander said his force should be given permission to confront terrorists inside Pakistan, state media reported.
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India-Pakistan
Pakistan to help Iran find bomb culprits: Qureshi
2009-10-22
[Dawn] Pakistan will support Iran in tracking down those responsible for a suicide bomb attack in southeastern Iran, Pakistan's foreign minister said on Wednesday, as calls in Iran grew for the perpetrators to be punished.
Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah (God's soldiers) claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack that killed 42 people, including several commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Iran says it operates from across the border in Pakistan.

The commander of the Guards'ground forces, Mohammad Pakpour, was quoted by state television as seeking permission on Tuesday to hunt terrorists inside neighbouring Pakistan.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi declined to comment on the television report and said an Iranian delegation was due in Pakistan for talks.

'We will help them and support them in unearthing the people responsible,' Qureshi told Reuters by telephone. 'We will sort this thing out on a government-to-government basis.'

He said terrorism was a regional problem and the two countries had to help each other.

'What we are asking is that we as neighbours, as friends, as brotherly friendly countries, have to adopt a cooperative regional approach to deal with this menace,' he said. 'Pakistan is suffering, Pakistan is a victim of terrorism.'

Pakistan has condemned Sunday's bombing which it called a 'ghastly act of terrorism' in an area near its border with Iran.

Jundollah denies any links to regional militant groups but analysts have linked it to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), an anti-Shia group based in Pakistan's Punjab province which works closely with the Pakistani Taliban.

Both are believed to have close ties to al Qaeda.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke on the telephone this week and stressed the need for cooperation in confronting and eradicating 'criminal terrorists'.

Relations between Iran and Pakistan have been generally good in recent years and the neighbours are cooperating on plans to build a natural gas pipeline.

But Iran has in the past accused Pakistan of hosting members of Jundollah, and Guards commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said on Monday the group had ties with US, British and Pakistani intelligence organisations.
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