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The countrys 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 Pakistans 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 Pakistans restive Balochistan province, has put the country's security establishment on tenterhooks.

Three days after the attack in Kech, Pakistans 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, Irans 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.

Baloch havens

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.

As a result, Baloch refugees have now moved west to Nimroz and into the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan. Some have returned and regrouped in Pakistani Balochistan as well. Regrouping has lent them renewed vigour and purpose. Baloch separatists carried out five attacks in January alone, despite the governments offer of a dialogue.

According to a 2021 security report from the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, the districts of Kech and Panjgur, close to the Iranian border, were among the hardest hit by Baloch insurgents between January and December of last year.

It seems that Pakistan has now reached a tipping point [in dealing with Iran], says Abdul Basit, a research fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

The sophistication of weapons and the ability to conduct complex coordinated attacks through the use of suicide missions are unprecedented.

Attacks are being carried out at night through sniper rifles. Earlier, [Pakistani] drones would deter them. Now they [Baloch rebels] dont give a hoot about it, he adds.

Complicated relationship

In the face of increasing ethno-sectarian violence, Pakistani authorities are in a bind. Open confrontation with Iran could antagonize a sizable Shia community that makes up roughly 20 percent of the population and open a new front of tensions with Iran at a time when the Pakistan Army is already stretched thin on the borders with India. It also risks stoking sectarian fault lines that Pakistan largely overcame after the bloodshed of the 90s.

However, slowly but surely, Pakistans intelligence officials appear to be deliberately leaking stories to the media about Iranian-backed militancy, notes Basit. The move signals the intelligence communitys frustration with a government that wants to avoid open confrontation with its neighbour.

Iran has kept these [ethno-nationalist and sectarian] groups as counterweights to use to turn up the heat in case Pakistan facilitates Jundullah and Jaish ul-Adl, he says, referring to Iranian Baluch rebel groups said to have safe havens in Pakistan.

In Pakistan's case, Iran's revolutionary rulers have been in competition since the 1990s over Afghanistan and their role in the Gulf, says Ahmed Quraishi, an Islamabad-based journalist with expertise in the MENA region. (Middle East & North Africa)

It makes sense that Khomeinists in Iran would like to limit any Pakistani role in Afghanistan and in the Gulf region through domestic pressure operations, he said.

The Saudi factor

In 2013, Iran began recruiting young Shia men from north and western Pakistan for its Zainabiyyoun Brigade to fight for the protection of Muslim shrines in Syria. Esmail Qaani, the current chief of the Quds Force the international arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corpswho at the time oversaw the Afpak region under his predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, spent years cultivating local terror networks. But at the height of the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, when Iran forced Pakistan to open its border for returning Shia pilgrims, many fighters were also pushed over.

While the intelligence assessment of the time discounted any security threat from the returning fighters, they were still kept under watch.

It was not until last year that several alleged Zainabiyyoun Brigade operatives were rounded up as the US decided to leave Afghanistan. In June last year, a Red Book issued by the Counter Terrorism Department of the provincial Sindh Police also listed 24 members of the pro-Iran sectarian group, Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan, as most wanted.

Interestingly, the string of arrests linked to Iran last year coincided with the thaw in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan relations.

The two countries fell out over the Saudi-led Organization of Islamic Councils nonchalance around the Kashmir issue when India unilaterally changed its special status to a union territory in October 2019. Saudi Arabia had abruptly asked for $3million in loan repayments, while the UAE, a close ally of the Saudis, banned new work visas for Pakistanis.

In May 2021, backdoor diplomacy paved the way for Prime Minister Imran Khans visit to Jeddah that reset soured relations.

Pakistani authorities reopened a criminal investigation into the 2011 murder of a Saudi diplomat in Karachi six months later and sent a letter to Iranian authorities asking for legal help in apprehending the alleged killer, a Sipah-e-Muhammad worker believed to be hiding in Iran.

The following month, the Saudis revived a $3 billion loan and offered a $1.2 billion oil facility on deferred payment.

Most significantly, the Saudi Interior Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Naif visited Islamabad on February 7, following the daring Baloch attacks on the Frontier Corps, with an offer of closer cooperation in intelligence sharing against Iranian proxy groups operating in Pakistan. A week later, Irans Interior Minister Vahidy was confronted in Islamabad with evidence of Baloch havens in Iran.

Last weeks arrest of another member of the pro-Iran Mehdi group, in connection with the 2011 attack on Karachis Saudi Consulate, is seen as further proof of Pak-Saudi joint intel operations.

It appears that the Saudis and the Emiratis have been rewarding Pakistans loyalty in kind. The UAE authorities picked up Pakistani businessman Hafeez Baloch from Dubai on Jan 27 and handed him over to Pakistan over suspicion of terror financing.

Source: TRT World

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Why Pakistan is coming down hard on Iran - TRT World

I didnt support the JCPOA (known as the Iran nuclear deal) in 2015, as I believed it was a fundamentally flawed agreement. Not only did it abandon the original aim of preventing Iran from ever becoming a nuclear weapon state, but it failed to tackle Irans ballistic missile programme, its systematic destabilisation of its regional neighbours or its championing of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

In 2018, President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, blaming Irans hostage taking, its continued missile development and its active support for groups such as the Houthis, who precipitated and exacerbated the bloody conflict in Yemen. When Iran refused to sign an agreement covering these issues, tighter US sanctions saw the Iranian currency go into free fall, a massive flight of capital from the country, and a deep recession follow.

Now, negotiations are being resurrected under the Biden administration. But has anything fundamentally changed? Iran has continued its nuclear programme at pace and its stockpile of enriched uranium is now massively greater than permitted, with some of it just below the level of purity needed for a nuclear bomb. In defiance of the United Nations, it has also continued with its ballistic missile programme. In 2018, both the UK and France accused Iran of breaching its obligations by testing medium-range ballistic missiles, whichwere capable of carrying multiple warheads.

Both before and after the collapse of the JCPOA, Iran has continued its malign activities in its own country and beyond. Two Iranian diplomats were expelled from the Netherlands in June 2018 for plotting political assassinations in the country. A bomb plot to target a rally of opposition groups in Paris was foiled by French intelligence. In the UK, a terrorist cell with links to Iran was caught stockpiling tonnes of ammonium nitrate explosives at a secret bomb factory on the outskirts of London.

Iran has been an active and consistent supporter of Palestinian terrorist organisations, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. Lebanese Hezbollah remains Irans primary terrorist proxy with the groups secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, proudly boasting that Hezbollah gets its money and arms from Iran, and as long as Iran has money, so does Hezbollah.

The implications of lifting sanctions on Iran are crystal-clear. It is through such proxies that Iran targets Israel and Israeli interests and gives effect to the long-standing hatred of Irans leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, for the very existence of the Israeli state.

To remove sanctions on Iranian oil without guarantees of stopping such activities would risk money being poured into regional destabilisation and the funding of groups who are fundamentally anti-West and anti the allies of the West. How, in any rational world, could that be regarded as progress?

Any new agreement with Iran must answer three questions. Does it stop Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state? Does it deal with Irans illegal ballistic missile programme with its ability to strike evermore distant targets? And does it restrict or rein back Irans malign influence in its own region and beyond?

When the original agreement was being drawn up, negotiators concluded that in order to make progress, they would have to isolate the nuclear deal from the other areas of concern. Abandoning the original aim of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, they eventually watered-down their ambitions and agreed to simply delay it.

Constraints on enrichment capabilities were designed to lengthen the time it would take Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single bomb to at least one year for the first 10 years of the agreement. The effect was simply to hand the crisis to succeeding governments further downthe line.

Today, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, with most coming from foreign sources, especially North Korea. It is the only country to have developed a 1,200-mile missile without first having a nuclear weapons capability. The implication is blindingly obvious. Iran has unveiled 10 new ballistic missiles and three new satellite launch vehicles (SLVs) since 2015, while in his first budget, the new President, Ebrahim Raisi, earmarked almost 200 million for ballistic missile projects.

All of this comes at a time when Western governments are desperate to find a replacement source for Russian fossil fuels. It would be complete folly if, in trying to escape from our dependency on Putins oil and gas, we were to end up funding the development of another nuclear state whose political stability, human-rights record and disregard for international law is at least as bad as Russia.

We have seen in the horrors enforced on Ukraine by Putins Kremlin why wishful thinking is a poorbasis for foreign and security policy. How irresponsible and foolish we would be to repeat the mistakes with Iran.

Liam Fox is MP for North Somerset and a former defence secretary

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Resurrecting the Iran nuclear deal would be an epic mistake - The Telegraph

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FIRST ON FOX: The Iranian regime is closing in on the nuclear threshold, and the options available to the United States to stop Tehran from going nuclear are quickly narrowing, according to a new report released Thursday.

The report by the Washington D.C., based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) warns that the regime "is approaching the point at which no outside power could prevent it from building nuclear weapons."

HOUSE REPUBLICANS WARN BIDEN AGAINST ANOTHER NUCLEAR DEAL WITH IRAN

"As Tehran approaches that threshold, the United States will face an increasingly difficult choice between allowing the regime to cross over it or taking assertive measures including potential military strikes to stop Iran from going nuclear," the report by fellows Andrea Stricker and Anthony Ruggiero says.

The report comes the same day as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it believes Iran has increased significantly its stockpile of highly enriched uranium in breach of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which both the U.S. and Iran subsequently left.

The Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018 over concerns that it didnt do enough to curb Irans nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. The U.S. pulled out and subsequently slapped a number of sanctions on Iran, which, in turn, increased its nuclear activity.

An Iranian flag flies at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant on Nov. 10, 2019. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration has since tried to re-enter the deal and talks are ongoing in Vienna with diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia trying to bring Iran and the U.S. back into the deal.

The FDD report warns that, with the talks being drawn out by Iran, it is giving the regime more room to position itself to reach the nuclear threshold. Already it has enough uranium to produce weapons-grade uranium for at least four nukes and is expanding ballistic missile programs that it could use as delivery vehicles.

"At present, if the regime decides to make its first nuclear weapon, it may need as little as three weeks to produce enough fissile material," it says.

The authors also note the uncertainty from the incomplete intelligence reporting by the IAEA, which acts as the U.N.s atomic watchdog. The Vienna-based agency said this week it has been unable to verify the exact size of Irans stockpile of enriched uranium due to limitations Tehran imposed on U.N. inspectors last year and that its monitoring and verification activities continue to be "seriously affected" by Iran's decision to stop letting inspectors access the agency's monitoring equipment.

The FDD report says the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), legitimized Irans advances toward the nuclear threshold, and while it prohibited weaponization, "the deals weak monitoring and verification provisions made this irrelevant."

RET. GEN. KELLOGG: WE COULD SEE A NUCLEAR BREAKOUT FROM IRAN

Since President Biden took office, the report notes, Iran has been increasing its enrichment of uranium toward weapons-grade purity, and says that should have provoked a "strong reaction" from the Biden administration and the IAEA but it did not.

"By prolonging negotiations in Vienna, the Islamic Republic brought its breakout time close to zero while earning billions of dollars from oil exports thanks to Bidens relaxation of sanctions as a goodwill gesture."

Now, the U.S. reportedly acknowledges that going back to the JCPOAs "breakout" time of 7-12 months is not feasible, and it is more likely to be 6-9 months under a new deal with the FDD report warning that an agreement that allows advanced centrifuges to remain would solidify that timeline.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WAIVES SANCTIONS ON IRANIAN CIVILIAN NUCLEAR ACTIVITIES AS DEAL TALKS HANG IN BALANCE

The authors state that, with a rapidly advancing Iran combined with uncertainty surrounding its intentions and activities, Washingtons options are narrow.

"Amid this uncertainty, President Biden might have to choose between carrying out military strikes based on incomplete or conflicting information or acquiescing to Irans development of nuclear weapons," the report says. "It would be preferable to keep Tehran far away from the threshold so that an American president never reaches this wrenching decision point."

It warns of a "flawed premise" shared by the Iran deal and the Biden administration that Iran can keep its uranium enrichment program while also being kept away from the nuclear threshold.

Instead, the authors argue, the U.S. should move to restore an international consensus that Iran cannot be trusted with an enrichment program, and launch an economic, financial and political pressure program to force it back to the negotiating table a program that includes restoring all prior sanctions on Iran.

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In the meantime, the report says the U.S. should consider the use of cyber-attacks and sabotage campaigns on nuclear sites to delay Irans progress.

"The Biden administration should take all related measures necessary to ensure that the worlds most prolific state sponsor of terrorism can never reach the nuclear threshold," they argue.

Fox News Ben Evansky and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Iran nearing nuclear threshold, with US options to stop it ...

VIENNA, March 1 (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday the war in Ukraine should be stopped and accused the "mafia-like regime" of the United States of creating the conflict.

Russia, whose troops invaded Ukraine last week, is a strategic partner for Iran, which has been under Western sanctions for years. While Tehran and Washington have been foes for decades, Iran and Russia have deepened trade ties and have been allies in the Syrian conflict.

"The U.S. regime creates crises, lives off of crises and feeds on various crises in the world. Ukraine is another victim of this policy," Khamenei said in a televised speech.

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"In my view, Ukraine is a victim of the crises concocted by the United States," he said. "There are two lessons to be learnt here. States which depend on the support of the U.S. and Western powers need to know they cannot trust such countries."

Khamenei criticised Washington and other Western nations as talks reached a critical stage in Vienna between Iran and world powers about reviving a 2015 nuclear deal.

Despite progress in the talks, the key sticking point is Tehran wants the issue of uranium traces found at several old but undeclared sites in Iran to be dropped and closed forever, an Iranian official told Reuters.

Tehran objects to claims by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that Iran failed to fully explain the uranium traces.

Britain's lead negotiator at the talks, Stephanie Al-Qaq, defended the IAEA, and said Britain, France, and Germany opposed interfering in its work.

"We will always reject any attempt to compromise IAEA independence," she wrote on Twitter.

Iran said on Monday efforts to revive the pact could succeed if the United States took a political decision to meet Tehran's remaining demands, as months of negotiations enter what one Iranian diplomat called a "now or never" stage.

The stakes are high, because the failure of 10 months of talks could carry the risk of a fresh regional war, more harsh sanctions on Iran by the West, and continued upward pressure on world oil prices already strained by the Ukraine conflict.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the remaining issues included the extent to which sanctions would be rolled back and providing guarantees that the United States would not quit the pact again.

All parties involved in the talks say progress has been made toward the restoration of the pact to curb Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, which the United States abandoned in 2018. But both Tehran and Washington have said there are still some significant differences to overcome.

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Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Writing by Michael Georgy and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Alex Richardson, Jon Boyle and Rosalba O'Brien

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Iran's supreme leader criticises U.S. over Ukraine crisis ...

On March 15, 1995, by Executive Order 12957, the President declared a national emergency pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706), to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of the Government of Iran. On May 6, 1995, the President issued Executive Order 12959, imposing more comprehensive sanctions on Iran to further respond to this threat. On August 19, 1997, the President issued Executive Order 13059, consolidating and clarifying those previous orders. The President took additional steps pursuant to this national emergency in Executive Order 13553 of September 28, 2010; Executive Order 13574 of May 23, 2011; Executive Order 13590 of November 20, 2011; Executive Order 13599 of February 5, 2012; Executive Order 13606 of April 22, 2012; Executive Order 13608 of May 1, 2012; Executive Order 13622 of July 30, 2012; Executive Order 13628 of October 9, 2012; Executive Order 13645 of June 3, 2013; Executive Order 13716 of January 16, 2016, which revoked Executive Orders 13574, 13590, 13622, 13645, and provisions of Executive Order 13628; Executive Order 13846 of August 6, 2018, which revoked Executive Orders 13716 and 13628; Executive Order 13871 of May 8, 2019; Executive Order 13876 of June 24, 2019; Executive Order 13902 of January 10, 2020; and Executive Order 13949 of September 21, 2020.

The actions and policies of the Government of Iran including its proliferation and development of missiles and other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities, its network and campaign of regional aggression, its support for terrorist groups, and the malign activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its surrogates continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.

For these reasons, the national emergency declared on March15, 1995, must continue in effect beyond March 15, 2022. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1year the national emergency with respect to Iran declared in Executive Order 12957. The emergency declared by Executive Order 12957 constitutes an emergency separate from that declared on November 14, 1979, by Executive Order 12170, in connection with the hostage crisis. This renewal, therefore, is distinct from the emergency renewal of November 9, 2021.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

March 3, 2022.

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Notice on the Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Iran - The White House