Pakistan has summoned the Iranian ambassador over threats from Iran to make military strikes inside the country if cross-border attacks do not stop, Aljazeera is reporting.
“Major-General Mohammad Baqeri made the comments on Monday, nearly two weeks after 10 Iranian border guards were killed in clashes near Mirjaveh, a town near the Iran-Pakistan border,” Aljazeera reported. “Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice), a Sunni armed group fighting for independence in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, claimed responsibility for the attack.”
The Sunni group said it killed the guards using long-range guns from inside Pakistan.
”We expect Pakistani officials to control the borders, arrest the terrorists and shut down their bases,” Baqeri said, according to Iran’s FARS news agency. “If the terrorist attacks continue, we will hit their safe havens and cells, wherever they are.”
The news agency reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif visited the Pakistani capital of Islamabad last week and asked Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to improve border security, and Sharif said his country would “deploy additional troops along its border.”
The Iranian threat to Pakistan was not the only one made in recent days. On Sunday, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan threatened to attack Saudi Arabia, save the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, if hostilities erupted between the two nations.
“The context for Dehghan’s remarks comes from an interview last Tuesday in which Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said meaningful diplomacy with Iran was impossible because the Iranian theocracy believes it has a divine mandate to seize control of the holy cities from Saudi Arabia and rule the entire Muslim world,” Breitbart News reported on Monday.
“How do you have a dialogue with a regime built on an extremist ideology… which says they must control the land of Muslims and spread their Twelver Jaafari sect in the Muslim World?” Prince Mohammed said in a transcript published by The National.
“Twelver” refers to Shiite Iran’s belief that a prophesized “Twelfth Imam” will soon appear and usher in the end of the world.
“We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia,” Salman vowed. “Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”
One year ago, flush from having economic sanctions lifted because of the nuclear agreement Iran made with the West, Iran wanted to move quickly to increase trade ties with regional neighbors.
At that time, Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani paid a visit to Islamabad and met with Sharif and “the two agreed on plans to increase trade and to complete a $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline that was halted because of the sanctions,” Breitbart News reported.
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