The Jaish al Adl militant Sunni group struck a security convoy in Goharkuh, Taftan County, Sistan Baluchistan in Iran on Saturday, just as Israel bombed Iranian targets in and around Tehran.
At the same time, Israel launched its retaliatory strikes against multiple targets in Iran, purportedly hitting a nuclear test site as well as rocket and missile production facilities.
Though Iran shrugged off the attack as being cosmetic and causing little damage, US assessments claim a substantial setback for Iranian missile production.
More worrying is the terror attack that was perpetrated on the Iran-Pakistan border.
Earlier, Iran had conducted a barrage of missile strikes inside Pakistan's Baluchistan Province on January 16, 2024, that targeted Jaish al Adl militants.
These strikes led to retaliation from Pakistan, who launched their own counteroffensive with rockets on January 18, which targeted Baluch separatists operating from within Iran.
These attacks were precipitated by the Kerman bombings of January 3 at the grave of slain commander, Soleimani, which killed 94 and wounded over 284 people.
ISIS had claimed responsibility for these attacks, with US intelligence asserting that the attacks originated from the Afghanistan chapter of ISIS.
The Kerman bombings can thus be viewed as the catalyst for the spiral of violence that saw Iran conduct multiple strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Israel, and which drew Hezbollah into a war of annihilation.
Whereas the Iranians were hit by Sectarian and guerrilla attacks in their west and Southeast, bordering Iraq and Pakistan, its second-largest city, Mashhad comes into sharp focus, with the US implying that it was under threat from the ISIS chapter in Afghanistan.
At the same time, Iran's other borders, the Caspian nations of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, as well as Turkiye would be feeling the heat, in case more fronts are opened up as a fallout of the ongoing tussle between Israel and Iran.
Pakistan would be equally worried at the prospect of facing the specter of ISIS which is threatening to engulf Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran into a new spiral of violence.
Such a battlefield will likely not be confined to asymmetrical, guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks. Still, it will feature the militaries of the two nations as well, as evidenced by the missile barrages fired across the Pak-Iranian border in January earlier this year.
Therefore, the nexus between Mossad, ISIS, and various militant groups is coming into focus, since such groups favor Israeli national security by eroding the sovereignty and writ of the Islamic nations such groups wage war against.
Because such organizations can operate so freely within and beyond borders, drawing recruits from within the local populace will be a deeply worrying sign for the security agencies concerned.
Even more worrying would be the Israeli ingress, and their ability to take advantage of the myriad security threats and breaches that such a scenario entails.
All indications point to a deterioration of the security situation inside Pakistan and along its borders with Afghanistan and Iran.
There is every reason to expect a flare-up in Kashmir and possibly even a confrontation between the Pakistani and Indian armies on the eastern borders, as India looks to shift the battlefield to Pakistan's northwest and southwest, thereby giving an entirely new dimension to the conventional and asymmetrical warfare confronted by the three nations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.
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