Analysis: Is US supporting suicide terrorists in Iran?

Jundullah men

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Jundullah, a militant anti-regime Sunni group in Iran, claimed responsibility last week for an October 18 suicide attack that killed 42 people, including five senior members of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards corps. Tehran blamed the attack, which is part of a wider low-intensity guerilla war in the country’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, on the work of covert American, British and Pakistani operatives. Should the Iranian allegations be taken seriously? IntelNews has written before about Washington’s complex relationship with Jundullah and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), two of several armed groups officially deemed terrorist by the US State Department. In 2007, ABC News went so far as to claim that Jundullah “has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005″.  But in a new article, former CIA operative Robert Baer, whose memoir, See No Evil, formed the basis of the 2005 motion picture Syriana, says Washington’s relationship with Jundullah “was never formalized and contact was sporadic” even after the US invasion of Iraq. That contact, which exists, is at present “confined to intelligence-gathering on [Iran]”, claims Baer. The closest Washington has ever come to incorporating Jundullah in its covert program against Iran was during the first Bush administration, according to the former CIA agent. But the plan was “quickly dropped”, says Baer, because the Baluch militant group was viewed as being “too close to al-Qaeda”. Baer’s article is available here.