Pakistan Calls On Iran For Closer Cooperation After Tit-For-Tat Strikes

Pakistan claimed the airstrikes were against alleged militant hideouts several kilometers inside Iranian borders at multiple locations in Saravan area which left at least twelve casualties, including several children.

This type of military confrontation between the two countries is unprecedented. Pakistan's airstrike, which occurred a day after the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) similarly targeted what it claimed were hideouts of Sunni militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan with missiles, marks the first attack by a foreign country inside Iranian soil since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).

“Missiles were fired into the Iranian soil after 35 years. No one can any longer boast of having protected the country from aggression. This is the result of allowing a group that constantly injects radicalism inside and abroad to grow, a self-appointed radical group that has got its hands on money and the media and has infiltrated decision-making structures,” political sociologist and social media researcher Mohammad Rahbari tweeted. 

Pakistan’s response Thursday to IRGC’s attack has been very firm, but many believe the Iranian authorities and state media’s reaction has been disproportionately mild and from a position of weakness.

Iranian authorities, including Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and state media, have largely avoided referring to Pakistan as the perpetrator of the attack. Instead, they are describing the airstrikes as "explosions in a village in the border area."

“Three or four kilometers inside Iranian borders is not different from Tehran or Esfahan. The child that was killed is Iranian. He is a guest in our house even if he is not Iranian by virtue of [identity] documents. Security, in an equal manner, is the right of all residents of Iran,” Mohammad-Reza Javadi-Yeganeh, university professor, tweeted.

Shortly after the attack, Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, a senior IRIB journalist with very close ties to security and intelligence bodies, implied that Iran and Pakistan had coordinated the attack. Her claim has also angered many.

“And they think national power is not undermined if they tell the media [the attack] ‘had been coordinated’ and they can whitewash everything in this manner,” Rahbari wrote. “After hours I have yet not managed to digest these foul reactions.”

The authorities’ insistence on calling the victims of the attack “foreign nationals”, a term they always use to refer to Afghans in Iran, has also been very conspicuous and angered many. Some local sources claim the victims are among the undocumented Iranians living in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

The Shiite clerical regime has refused to issue national identity cards to thousands of Sunni Baluch people over the years, but its television and some loyalists have pretended that the Pakistani attack was not a problem, since those killed were not Iranians. This has prompted the most angry reactions on social media.

“How degenerate must a regime be to call Iran's children non-Iranians. Why? It cannot give a military response to Pakistan; therefore, it tries to gloss over the attack on Iranian soil and the killing of civilians. Pakistan's attack paved the way for other countries [to attack Iran] and showed how weak this regime is,” Youth of Isfahan Neighborhoods, a small dissident group in Esfahan, tweeted.

“To us, being a fellow countryman … is not a worthless piece of paper that you call a birth certificate. To us, those women and children are fellow countrymen even if they were Afghans or Pakistanis, the same way that you are un-Iranian and strangers whether you were born in Najaf [in Iraq as some Iranian politicians are] or in Esfahan,” another tweet with 2K of likes said.

A Dutch child of less than one year old had died in attacks by Iran on Erbil, Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot said in a statement.

She added she had asked her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for clarification and had summoned the Iranian ambassador.

Amirabdollahian, in comments quoted by Iran's state media, told Bruins Slot: "We don't have documentary proof about the killing of a child at the Mossad terrorist compound in northern Iraq."

"We are drawing the Dutch government's attention to the genocide and massacre of thousands of Palestinian women and children in Gaza," he added in the phone call.

Iran's IRGC launched missile and drone strikes on three neighboring countries in about one day. In the attack on Iraqi Kurdistan's capital Erbil, Iran destroyed the house of a well-know Iraqi Kurd, killing him and his family, including a toddler.

Provincial officials in Pakistan said two children were also killed in the IRGC's attack in Pakistan.

Having hit several locations in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan Monday, IRGC missiles and drones targeted Pakistan Tuesday, in an operation that Iran said was against two bases of the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl.

Iran’s missile strike in Iraq, however, is likely to deepen worries about worsening instability across the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas started on October 7, with Iran's militant proxy forces also entering the fray from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Jalal Hajavi, a 60-year-old resident of Sterling, Virginia, was sentenced to 24 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for his involvement in a scheme to export industrial goods from the United States to Iran. The shipments were routed through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and he had a co-conspirator located in Iran, according to the statement released Thursday.

Hajavi was convicted by a jury in September 2023 for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), smuggling, and unlawfully exporting and reexporting goods to Iran without a license.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said, “Mr. Hajavi illegally shipped industrial equipment to the Iranian regime, smuggled restricted goods through the UAE to Iran, and caused a shipping company to submit false information to the US government.”

According to Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod, “Shipping items to Iran is against the law, regardless of whether done directly or by way of a third country.”

“Hajavi’s conduct was particularly egregious because he was previously informed on at least two occasions that his conduct was prohibited,” saidUS Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia.

Iranian state media published the statement on Friday, that claimed several men belonging to different cells were identified and detained. The Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the January 3 bombings in Kerman during a memorial ceremony at the tomb of IRGC’s Qasem Soleimani. He was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

The deadly attack in Kerman prompted harsh criticism of Iran’s security and intelligence organizations for failing to anticipate and prevent the incident, while they were busy enforcing hijab on women. Since then, officials have made several claims of arrests. However, the Friday statement contained slightly more detail than previous claims.

Stating that ISIS is Israel’s creation, a claim often made by Tehran officials, the intelligence ministry said they arrested two people who entered the country after the January 3 bombing, intending to stage new attacks. It also said that people directly linked to the Kerman bombing were arrested and caches of explosives and weapons seized.

It is often very difficult to verify such statements by Iranian security forces, as access and information is strictly controlled. So far, none of the detainees have been reliably identified. Authorities have provided some names, which might be just pseudonyms.

Following the Kerman incident, Iran launched ballistic missiles earlier this week on targets in Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria and Pakistan, saying it was avenging a series of attacks in Iran. Pakistan retaliated by striking a rural area in southeastern Iran, leading to high tensions in the region.

State media quoted Vahid Azizi, an official in the tax inspectorate as saying, “One of the country’s banks has refrained from supplying information on suspicious transactions of businesses despite repeated warnings,” leading to the decision to ban the CEO and members of the board of directors from leaving the country. He did not name the bank in question.

Azizi emphasized that other banks have also been warned to provide all information necessary for the tax authorities before February 20th.

Both Iran’s government and its state-controlled and quasi-private banks face serious financial problems due to years of economic crisis, rising inflation and problems stemming from the inefficiencies of a state-controlled economy.

The Iranian government has been relentlessly printing money in the past five years after the United States withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear accord and imposed economic sanctions in 2018. This has fueled inflation, while the government has failed to effectively respond to the economic challenges.

There have been several major corruption scandals related to government officials and individuals considered regime insiders. This has also affected the banking system and the government pension schemes. Most banks are run by political appointees who maintain government control over lending and investments, while also finding opportunities to engage in suspicious financial activities.

The government faced with a large budget deficit, has resorted to increasing taxes, which is hard to enforce in a system mired by political influences and insider networking.