Pakistan- Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday, a day after Iran launched airstrikes on Pakistan that it claimed targeted bases of a terror group. Islamabad angrily denounced the attack as a “blatant violation” of its airspace and said it killed two children.
Tuesday’s strike on Pakistan’s restive southwestern Baluchistan province imperiled diplomatic relations between the two neighbors, but both sides appeared wary of provoking the other. Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks.
The attack also threatened to further ignite violence in a Middle East unsettled by Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. Iran launched strikes late Monday in Iraq and Syria over a suicide bombing that killed more than 90 people earlier this month. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, announced that Islamabad was recalling its ambassador to Iran over the strikes.
“Last night’s unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty by Iran is a violation of international law and the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations,” she said in a televised address.
Baloch added that Pakistan asked the Iranian ambassador, who was visiting Tehran when the attack took place, not to return. Iran did not immediately acknowledge Pakistan’s decision.
Reports in Iranian media said the elite Revolutionary Guard targeted bases belonging to the terror group “Jaish al-Adl” which Iran has fought in border areas and which it says is funded by the US and its regional allies.
Six bomb-carrying drones and rockets struck homes that the group claimed housed families of the fighters.
Videos shared by the Baluch activist group HalVash, purportedly from the site, showed a burning building and two charred corpses.
However, there were signs that Pakistan was trying to contain any anger over the strike. The country’s typically outspoken and nationalistic media covered the attack Wednesday with unusual restraint.
Iranian state media continued to ignore the strikes, instead discussing a joint naval drill held by the Pakistani and the Iranian navies in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. Pakistani officials acknowledged the drill, but said it came before Iran’s strikes.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, while speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, acknowledged that Tehran had carried out the attacks in Pakistan. He defended the action while repeatedly being told by an interviewer that Pakistan had condemned the attack.
Iran also said Revolutionary Guard forces killed a suspected Jaish al-Adl member in Rask, near the Pakistani border. Activists had described seeing drones and aircraft overhead at the site.
Pakistani defense analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said the government would weigh any potential retaliation carefully.
The country’s air defense and missile systems are primarily deployed along the eastern border to respond to potential threats from India. But it might consider taking some measures to respond to such strikes from its western border with Afghanistan and Iran, Ali said.
Jaish al-Adl was founded in 2012, and Iranian officials believe it largely operates in Pakistan. The group has claimed bombings and kidnapped members of Iran’s border police in the past. In December, suspected Jaish al-Adl members killed 11 people and wounded eight others in a nighttime attack on a police station in southeastern Iran. Another recent attack killed another police officer in the area.
In 2019, Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing targeting a bus that killed 27 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Iran has suspected that Pakistan is hosting insurgents, possibly at the behest of its regional archrival, Saudi Arabia. However, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a Chinese-mediated détente in March, easing tensions. Pakistan, meanwhile, has blamed Iran in the past for militant attacks targeting its security forces.
It remains unclear why Iran launched the attack now, particularly as its foreign minister met with Pakistani caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar the same day at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Kakar has yet to comment publicly on the attacks.
His predecessor, Shehbaz Sharif, said he was shocked at the breach of sovereignty. Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Sharif said “sincere dialogue and meaningful cooperation” between the two countries was the need of the hour.
Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, as well as Iran’s neighboring Sistan and Baluchestan province, has faced a low-level insurgency by Baluch nationalists for more than two decades. They initially wanted a share of provincial resources, but later initiated an insurgency for independence.
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