Regional tension in the Middle East expands towards Central Asia. Pakistani aircraft bombed “terrorist hideouts” in the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan early Thursday morning, causing at least nine deaths, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Islamabad responds with a symmetrical attack to the operation carried out in its territory by Iran last Tuesday in which two people were killed against Jaish al-Adl, a separatist group based in the Pakistani province of Balochistan.
With this latest attack, the Pakistani government intends to rebalance the balance of power with its neighbor, but the exchange of missiles between a nuclear power (Pakistan) and a military power (Iran) further tightens the rope in a region that, since the beginning of Israel’s war against Hamas on October 7, lives in fear of a territorial expansion of the conflict with unprecedented consequences.
Iran and its allies of the “Axis of resistance” (Hizbullah, Hamas, the Shiite militias of Syria and Iraq and the Houthis of Yemen) and Israel and theirs (with the United States at the head) have been playing a delicate game of chess on the region board to defend your positions. It is a calculated tension with measured attacks to avoid a regional escalation, but the mix of actors involved, nerves or a bad calculation could trigger a fatality.
In this context, the entry on the scene of a nuclear power like Pakistan logically raises concerns. Tehran was quick on Tuesday to specify that its actions in Pakistani territory had nothing to do with the war in Gaza and stated that all those killed were Iranian nationals. But despite the fact that both Pakistan and Iran have separatist insurgents in the area as a common enemy, the ease with which Iranian missiles and drones crossed the border of a country that is considered a power for its nuclear arsenal was a humiliation that Islamabad -and especially his omnipresent army- could not tolerate. A response against an equivalent target of the same power was to be expected. Now they are in a draw.
The question that is most difficult to answer now is why, with all the open fronts that Tehran has, it has decided to attack the insurgents in Pakistani territory and provoke Islamabad. The Islamic Republic and its allies have suffered and carried out attacks on all fronts, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Red Sea… Even in Iran itself, with the Islamic State attack in Kerman, which caused 84 deaths on last January 3rd. Why take the risk of opening another front?
One of the answers could be that Iran wants to send the message to both its allies and its enemies that it has the ability to take revenge for any aggression anywhere (remember that in 24 hours it also bombed jihadist groups in the Syrian province of Idlib and to an alleged Mossad center in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan). Last December, Jaish al Adl raided a police station in the Sistan-Balochistan region, so this week’s action could be considered retaliation.
This display of military muscle also clearly targets the United States and Israel. The Iranian military has openly stated that the range of its ballistic missiles has the capacity to reach US bases in the Middle East or even Tel Aviv. After the attack on Idlib, the Revolutionary Guard claimed that it had used a Kheibar Shekan missile, capable of flying up to 1,450 kilometers, from the southern province of Khuzestan. The choice of the missile and the launch site suggest that Iran would want to convey to the world that, if it wanted, it could reach various points in Israel.
Another factor to take into account would be the internal one. At a time when discontent is increasing after years of protests over the repression of women who refuse to wear the mandatory veil or the high cost of living and with a Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, 84 years old and with delicate health, the regime knows that the only unifying factor of Iranian society is the external enemy. As already happened after the US assassination in 2020 of General Qasem Soleimani, a national hero, if the vast majority of Iranians agree on one thing, it is the rejection of the Great Satan (as they call the United States) and its allies.
