Iran Nabs Top NATO Terrorist with Help from Pakistan

Webster G. Tarpley
TARPLEY.net
February 25, 2010
The Battle for Baluchistan: Iran Nabs Top NATO Terrorist with Help from Pakistan

On Tuesday Feb. 23, Iran announced the capture of Abdulmalek Rigi, the boss of the terror organization Jundullah, which works for NATO. The capture of Rigi represents a serious setback for the US-UK strategy of using false flag state-sponsored terrorism against Iran and Pakistan, and ultimately to sabotage China’s geopolitics of oil. The Iranians claim to have captured Rigi all by themselves, but the Pakistani ambassador to Teheran is quoted in The Dawn as claiming an important role for Pakistan. The Iranians say that Rigi was attempting to fly from Dubai to Kyrgystan, and that his plane was forced to land in Iran by Iranian interceptors. This exploit recalls Oliver North’s 1985 intercept of the accused Achille Lauro perpetrators, including Abu Abbas, forcing their Egyptian plane to land at Sigonella, Sicily. But other and perhaps more realistic versions suggest that Iran was tipped off by the Pakistanis, or even that Rigi was captured by Pakistan and delivered to the Iranians.

Jundullah, otherwise known as the Rigi organization, is a clan-based Mafia organization that has long infested the Iran-Pakistan border. The Rigis are traditionally smugglers and drug pushers of royalist persuasion, and now they have branched out into terrorism. Jundullah is mounting a Sunni rebellion against the Shiite Iranian regime in Iranian Baluchistan. They have blown up a Shiite mosque, killing 25, and managed to kill 50 in a bombing in Pishin last October, where their victims included some top commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, against which Mrs. Clinton has now declared war. There is no doubt that Jundullah is on the US payroll. This fact has been confirmed by Brian Ross of ABC News, the London Daily Telegraph, and by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. Hersh noted that Jundullah has received some of the $400 million appropriated by the US Congress in the most recent Bush-era regime change legislation targeting Iran.

Jundullah is a key part of the US-UK strategy of fomenting ethnic and religious civil war in both Iran and Pakistan. Jundullah is a twofer in this context, since it can help destabilize both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. Baluchistan has special importance because any oil pipeline linking Iran with China must go straight across Baluchistan. Jundullah’s false flag jihad is a means to make sure that strategic pipeline, which would help solve China’s energy problem, is never built.

There is also no doubt that Jundullah functions as an arm of NATO, a kind of irregular warfare asset similar in some ways to the KLA of Kosovo. Rigi is reported by the Iranians to have met with Jop de Hoop Scheffer when he was NATO Secretary General. Rigi has also met with various NATO generals operating in Afghanistan. Who knows — he may have met with McChrystal himself, a covert ops veteran from Iraq.

This capture comes at a moment when Baluchistan is the object of intense US-UK exertions. The current US-NATO offensive in southern Afghanistan targets Marjah and the rest of Helmand province, which directly faces Baluchistan. Many observers were puzzled when the US and NATO publicized the Marjah offensive in advance. Militarist talking heads like General Barry McCaffrey responded that the main goal of the Marjah offensive was not to destroy the Taliban, but to drive them out of the province. It was thus clear from the beginning that the real goal was to drive the Helmand Taliban fighters into Pakistani Baluchistan. Why?

A statement from the Afghan Taliban covered on the RIA Novosti web site suggests that the real goal of the US-NATO offensive in Marjah-Helmand is to attack Chinese economic interests in Pakistani Baluchistan, and especially the port of Gwadar, one of China’s largest overseas projects. If the US can push the Taliban into Pakistani Baluchistan and into the area around Gwadar, they will have a pretext for militarization – perhaps through Blackwater mercenaries, who are already operating massively in Pakistan, or perhaps through direct US military involvement in the zone. US jackboots on the ground in Baluchistan would interfere mightily with Chinese economic development plans. They would also allow the US to commandeer Gwadar as the home port of a new NATO supply line into southern Afghanistan, allowing the avoidance of the Khyber Pass bottleneck. The US could also use Baluchistan as a springboard for bigger and better terror ops into Iran, electronic surveillance of Iranian activities, and so forth.

The US and NATO had evidently planned a double envelopment of Baluchistan, with Taliban fighters from Helmand arriving from the north, while the Jundullah escalated their own activity on the ground. Now that Rigi has joined his brother in Iranian jails, Jundullah has been decapitated, and the NATO strategy has consequently been undermined. Iran has bagged a dangerous terrorist foe. Another winner is Pakistan, where The Dawn celebrated the capture of Rigi as “a godsend” and “a lucky break” for Pakistan. By helping Rigi to fall into Iranian hands, Pakistan may have finally found an effective way to counter the US-UK strategy, which notoriously aims at the breakup and partition of Pakistan. The coming Iranian trial of Rigi may go far towards exposing the real mechanism of terrorism in today’s world, with the CIA sitting in the dock next to Rigi.

CIA Black Ops In Iran Escalates

Iran Vows Revenge On US And UK After Attack
Ashish Joshi, Gulf correspondent

Iran has warned it will take revenge against the US and Britain, accusing them of being involved in a suicide bombing that killed several Revolutionary Guard commanders.

General Noor Ali Shooshtari was among the Revolutionary Guard victims

Six senior commanders and dozens of civilians died in the attack.

The headquarters of the armed forces blamed the bombing on "terrorists" backed by "the Great Satan America and its ally Britain", the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

"Not in the distant future we (Iran) will take revenge."

Earlier, Iranian state television said Sunni rebels carried out the bombing.

It said the militant group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) had claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in Iran in recent years.

State media cited sources as saying "Britain was directly involved" - a common tactic used to divert attention away from the country’s internal problems.

Attack was near border with Pakistan

The UK Foreign Office said it rejected "in the strongest terms" any assertion of British involvement.

"The British Government condemns the terrorist attack in the Province of Sistan and Baluchistan in Iran and the sad loss of life which it caused," it added in a statement.

The US also condemned the bombing and denied it had anything to do with it.

"We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives. Reports of alleged US involvement are completely false," US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

The allegations of foreign involvement are likely to raise tension between Tehran and the West, a day before nuclear talks in Vienna.

The military commanders were inside a car on their way to a meeting with tribal leaders when an attacker with explosives strapped to his body blew himself up.

The victims include General Noor Ali Shooshtari, the deputy commander of the Guard's ground force, and Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh, the Guard's chief provincial commander, the IRNA news agency said.

Up to 30 other people, including civilians and tribal leaders, are reported to have been killed and more than 20 wounded.

The attack took place in the south-eastern Pishin region near Iran's border with Pakistan.

Iran's parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, condemned the assassination, saying the bombing was aimed at disrupting security in the region.

"We express our condolences for their martyrdom," he said.

"The intention of the terrorists was definitely to disrupt security in Sistan-Baluchistan Province."

Revolutionary Guard soldiers

Over the past few years Jundallah has waged a low-level insurgency and has been at the centre of several violent attacks.

In May, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shi'ite mosque that killed 25 people in Zahedan.

Thirteen members of the group were convicted for the attack and hanged in July.

Jundallah accuses the mostly Shi'ite government of persecution.

This latest bombing comes at a time when Iran is still reeling from the fallout of its disputed June presidential elections.

A successful attack on such a high profile target marks a significant victory for the attackers.

The Revolutionary Guard was created after the 1979 Islamic Revolution as an ideological and impenetrable wall to defend Iran's clerical rule.

The 120,000-strong elite force controls Iran's missile program and has its own ground, naval and air units.

Today the unit has evolved into a socio-military force with political and economic influence.

It is now an inextricable part of Iran's power structure.

Seymour Hersh: US Training Jundullah and MEK for Bombing Preparation

According to an interview July 8, 2008, with Seymour Hersh, the US is training terrorist groups to cause chaos inside Iran, provoking an aggressive reaction from the Iranians, which will serve as a pretext for military action from the US.

Source: CASMII

Seymour Hersh: US Training Jondollah and MEK for Bombing preparation

In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield’, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration’s executive power, about the US recognition of Iran’s overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.

Hersh explains that the aim of the US covert operations inside Iran is to create a pretext for attack with the goal of regime change. “The strategic thinking behind this covert operation is to provoke enough trouble and chaos so that the Iranian government makes the mistake of taking aggressive action which will give the impression of a country in acute turmoil”, he said. “Then you have what the White House calls the ‘casus belli’, a reason to attack the country. That is the thinking and it is very crazy.”

On Iran’s role in Iraq, Hersh points out: “There is absolutely no clear evidence known to the American government that the Iranian leadership has any interest in provoking trouble with the United States in Iraq by sending in people to cause mayhem or kill Americans. There is just no evidence for it.” He continues further on: “Frankly, the guys I know in the inside– in the Special Forces, high up in DoD, high up in the intelligence community–if you push them hard enough, they tell you that Iran has been more of a force for stability in Iraq than negative”.

Hersh comments that the decision to launch these covert operations was prompted by the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate’s verdict that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme and that the approval by the US Congress leadership of the $400 million budget for the operations “is totally an expansion” of the executive powers of the Bush Administration.

He explains how the Bush Administration’s policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” has led the US to support the Baluchi organisation Jondollah and the MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq a.k.a PMOI), both of which have clear track records of terrorist activities including against the US. He reiterates that the US has been giving arms and cash to the terrorists in the MEK for years and reveals that “most of the [MEK] leaders have been taking our money and cashing it in an awful lot of bank accounts in London.” He also reveals for the first time that the US has trained MEK teams in the state of Nevada and that “they do a lot of crazy stuff inside Iran”.

Hersh warns that “we have been moving cruise missiles there for a few months now”, and that the US military is ready. “Our submarines are there, our destroyers are there with cruise missiles aboard, our aircrafts are there, our soldiers are there” to attack Iran within “10 to 12 hours” of the go-ahead order by President Bush, he says, stressing that troops have to go on the ground in Iran in order to destroy Iran’s defensive systems.

He finally points out that Bush “is going to be a very active president, I am afraid, until 11:59:59 seconds on January 20, 2009” and raises the alarm about an “October surprise”, a military attack on Iran, in particular if Obama continues to have a lead in the polls.

Listen to the whole interview here .

For more information or to contact CASMII please visit http://www.campaigniran.org