The unprecedented attacks by both Pakistan and Iran on either side of their border appeared to target Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals. The countries accuse each other of providing a haven to the groups in their respective territories.
The flare-up between Iran and Pakistan comes as the Middle East remains unsettled by Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and on the heels of Iranian airstrikes late Monday in Iraq and Syria. Those airstrikes were in response to a suicide bombing in Iran by Islamic State militants in early January that killed over 90 people.
Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks, but analysts say this week’s tit-for-tat strikes were at least partially prompted by internal political pressures.
Iran is dealing with unrest against its theocracy and has faced pressure for action ever since the Islamic State suicide bombing. It is also seeking to flex military power at a time when militant groups it supports in the region — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen — are engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pakistan, meanwhile, could not leave Tuesday’s airstrikes by Iran unchallenged, and it faces a crucial February general election in which its military is a powerful political force.
“The government and military have been under immense pressure,” said Abdullah Khan, an analyst at the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. “Iran celebrated (Tuesday’s) attack in its media and the Pakistani public perception of a strong army is not as it used to be, so it had to respond.”
The U.S., China, the United Nations and others urged the two countries to de-escalate.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry described its attack Thursday as “a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes.”
The ministry said in a statement it had “credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities” and pledged “unflinching resolve to protect and defend its national security against all threats.”
Pakistan’s military described using drones, rockets, and “standoff weapons,” which are missiles fired from aircraft at a distance — likely meaning Pakistan’s fighter jets didn’t enter Iranian airspace.
Pakistan recalls its ambassador to Iran over airstrikes by Tehran that killed 2 people
Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul-Haq-Kakar cut short his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to return home. Kakar is expected to meet Friday with the heads of Pakistan’s armed forces, its intelligence chief and other senior government officials.
Among the dead in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province were three women, four children and two men near the town of Saravan along the Pakistani border, according to Ali Reza Marhamati, a deputy governor of the province. He said the dead were not Iranian citizens.
The Baluch Liberation Army, an ethnic separatist group that has operated in the region since 2000, said in a statement the strikes “martyred innocent Baluch people.”
Pakistan’s military said the strikes also hit targets associated with the Baluchistan Liberation Front, though that group did not acknowledge the claim.
HalVash, an advocacy group for the Baluch people, shared images online that appeared to show the remains of the munitions used in the attack. It said a number of homes had been struck in Saravan. It shared videos showing a mud-walled building destroyed and smoke rising from the strike.
Iran later summoned Pakistan’s charge d’affaires in the country. Pakistan already had withdrawn its ambassador over Tuesday’s attack.
Pakistan named its operation “Marg Bar Sarmachar,” which translates in Farsi to ‘’death to the guerrillas.’'
Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, as well as Iran’s neighbouring Sistan and Baluchestan province, have faced a low-level insurgency by Baluch nationalists for more than two decades.
However, the groups targeted this week are different. Jaish al-Adl, the Sunni separatist group that Iran targeted Tuesday, grew out of another Islamic extremist group known as Jundallah that was once alleged to have ties to al-Qaida. Jaish al-Adl has long been suspected of operating out of Pakistan and launching attacks on Iranian security forces.
The Baluch Liberation Army, which has no religious component and has launched attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese interests, is suspected of hiding out in Iran. The Baluchistan Liberation Front is similarly nationalistic.
The risk of escalation remained Thursday as Iran’s military begins a planned annual air defence drill from its port of Chabahar near Pakistan all across the south of the country to Iraq.
Iran and Pakistan share a 900-kilometer (560-mile), largely lawless border in which smugglers and militants freely cross. The route is also key to global opium shipments coming out of Afghanistan. The Taliban separately urged restraint amid the tensions.
For both Iran and Pakistan, the cross-border attacks renew questions about their own military preparedness, particularly their radar and air defence systems.
For Pakistan, such systems are crucial as tensions are always at a low boil with India, its nuclear-armed rival. Iran relies on those systems against potential strikes by its main enemy, the U.S.
There are also complex geopolitical considerations at play. Pakistan’s military relies on U.S., Chinese and French fighter jets for its air force — meaning some of those foreign weapons were used in Thursday’s attack.
Beijing, which urged restraint, has a major development project in Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
The U.S. also sought to ease tensions. “There’s no need for escalation,” said Matthew Miller, a U.S. State Department spokesman.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres likewise urged both countries “to exercise maximum restraint to avoid a further escalation of tensions.”
Iran-Pakistan flare-up rooted in restive borderlands
An Iranian strike on Pakistan this week that drew a rapid military riposte was likely intended as a tit-for-tat regional exchange but raises the risk of escalation or greater regional turmoil, according to Brookings Institution Vice-President and Director of Foreign Policy Suzanne Maloney.
Both the heavily-armed neighbours, oftentimes at odds over instability on their frontier, appear to want to try to contain the strains resulting from the highest-profile cross-border intrusions in recent years, two analysts and two of the officials said.
"There's been longstanding frictions along the border of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran," said Maloney. "I think that there was a deliberate attempt to ensure that neither military was hit on either side. The Iranians hit what they described as a militia group, as did the Pakistanis. And I think that that for now keeps this, calibrated exchange."
Iran sent shockwaves around the region on Tuesday with a missile strike against what it described as hardline Sunni Muslim militants in southwest Pakistan. Two days later, Pakistan in retaliation attacked what it said were separatist militants in Iran - the first air strike on Iranian soil since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Tuesday's strike was one of Iran's toughest cross-border assaults on the Sunni militant Jaish al-Adl group in Pakistan, which it says has links to Islamic State. Many of Jaish's members previously belonged to a now-defunct militant group known as Jundallah that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
The move deepened worries about Middle East instability that have spread since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October. Iran-allied militias from Yemen to Lebanon have launched strikes on U.S. and Israeli targets, including on Red Sea shipping, in sympathy with Gaza's Palestinians.
It also came a day after Iran launched attacks in Iraq and Syria, which it said targeted Israeli espionage and Islamic State operations, respectively.
Iran's strikes are also intended to show its influence in the context of the regional crisis over Gaza, Maloney said.
"I think what the Iranians have been doing is to try to, demonstrate that they can use proxies to make the United States and Israel feel much more pressure across the region. The hope is to force the United States to pull back from its posture in the region, both its direct and ongoing support to Israel's war in Gaza, but also, of course, the long-standing American military presence in various parts of the region," she said. "With respect to Israel, what the Iranians are hoping to do is to ensure that the Israelis are not able to succeed in their war aims to eradicate Hamas in its entirety, and to, in fact, ensure that the Israelis don't experience, you know, an end to this conflict in a way that gives them some sense of, of, closure, conclusion and even a sense of victory. As long as the Israelis don't win, the Iranians will perceive that as a victory.”