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Iranian strike inside Pakistan a distant option: analysts

* Tehran will pressurise Islamabad for quick results
* Analyst predicts swift action by Pakistan against terrorists

TEHRAN: Iran will step up diplomatic pressure on Islamabad to rein in anti-Iran militants allegedly operating from Pakistan, but a cross-border strike remains a possibility, Iranian analysts said on Wednesday.

However, the friendly ties that exist between the neighbours are unlikely to be affected in the long term by Sunday’s suicide attack against Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in south-eastern Iran.

Tehran claims those who carried out the attack, which killed 42 people including 15 guards, snuck across the border from Pakistan with the support of the intelligence services of Pakistan, Britain and the US. The suicide bomber blew himself up at a meeting of the Revolutionary Guards and local tribesmen on Sunday in Sistan-Baluchestan province where Sunni rebel group Jundullah has being involved in an insurgency against Tehran’s Shia rule for nearly a decade. Jundullah, in an Internet statement, claimed the attack, which it said was to avenge “the wounds of the Baloch people who have been bleeding for years without end”.

Iranian officials have said Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Reigi is in Pakistan and have demanded he be handed over. Pakistani officials say he is in Afghanistan.

More pressure: “In the coming days, Iran will put more pressure on Pakistan for quick results since it has to answer to its own people at home,” said Akbar Montajabi, a reformist political analyst. A day after the attack, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told President Asif Ali Zardari the presence of anti-Iranian militants in his country was not “justifiable” and they needed to be “quickly confronted”. Iran’s foreign and intelligence ministers on Tuesday further ramped up pressure on Islamabad, urging it to take swift action against the rebels. Pakistan has said the attack was carried out by forces out to “spoil ties” between the two neighbours, but dismissed Tehran’s claim its territory was being used as a springboard for attacks.

Early action: Independent analyst Mohammad Saleh Sedghian predicted an early response from Islamabad against the rebels. “Pakistan will not delay a response towards the militants, but we have to understand that it is experiencing a complicated situation,” he said, referring to Islamabad’s own battle against the Taliban. “Not all strings in that country are held by its president and the Iranians know it,” he said. A senior Iranian general, Mohammad Pakpour has not ruled out a cross-border Iranian military strike to flush out the militants if diplomatic initiatives from Tehran fail to convince Islamabad.

Analysts said such cross-border military strikes, though possible, remain a distant possibility given the political situation in the region.

“A strike such as those which Turkey carries out inside northern Iraq against the PKK (Kurdish rebels) is always possible, but for Iranians to enter Pakistan has to get some kind of green light from multinational forces in the region,” said Sedghian.

But Gholam Reza Ghalandarian, conservative analyst and managing director of Quds newspaper, said Iran would not allow Pakistan to sit on the issue for long. afp

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