Pakistan’s response to Iran mirrored Tehran’s reasoning on airstrikes, says expert

- Islamabad used similar terminology when it targeted ‘terrorists’ of Balochistan Liberation Army and Balochistan Liberation Front

ISTANBUL

The diplomatic and military response from Islamabad "mirrored" the language Iran employed in the justification of its strikes inside Pakistan, an international law expert said.

“The language used by Pakistan in its diplomatic response mirrors the rationale on Iranian strikes given by the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian during his address" to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, said Oves Anwar.

Islamabad said Thursday it launched precision strikes against separatist "terrorists" in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, two days after Tehran struck what it described as bases for the Sunni Jaish al-Adl militant group in the border town of Panjgur in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province.

Both sides claimed civilians were killed in the strikes.

Anwar, director of the Islamabad-based thinktank Research Society of International Law, told Anadolu that international law does not provide any justification to violate another state’s sovereignty “simply to re-establish deterrence.”

“That is why Pakistan used a pre-emptive self-defense argument against BLA/F terrorists,” said Anwar, referring to the separatist group in Pakistan.

Anwar added that Islamabad “did not phrase the response as self-defense in response” to Tehran’s strikes, referring to a statement by Pakistan's Foreign Office which said the military action inside Iran “was in pursuit of Pakistan’s own security and national interest which is paramount and cannot be compromised.”

That would have “required Pakistan to target the source of those strikes" that is Iran's Revolutionary Guard, he said.

Both Islamabad and Tehran stressed “national security” to justify their actions.

Following counter-airstrikes, the two sides were quick to express “respect” for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan and Iran.

But Pakistan, Anwar said, “in its response said it targeted terrorists, mirroring the reasoning offered by the Iranian top diplomat on why Iran struck targets in Pakistan.”

However, he warned it was a “dangerous route to adopt.”

“Pakistan suffered from the US utilizing this argument for drone strikes in Pakistan for decades,” he added.

Given that Pakistan is one of only nine nuclear-armed nations across the world while Iran is in a race to become tenth, Anwar said the counter-strikes were undertaken to “simply re-establish deterrence.”

Different nature of threats in namesake provinces

Pakistan and Iran share a borderline of around 959 kilometers (596 miles) in the namesake provinces of southwestern Balochistan in Pakistan and the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan province in Iran.

People-to-people and business engagements between the two nations mostly happen through these two provinces.

While Tehran has blamed Jaish al-Adl, founded in 2012 and is known as Jaish al-Dhulm in Iran, for tensions in Sunni-dominated Sistan-Baluchestan, Pakistan is fighting a long-drawn insurgency in scarcely populated Balochistan province, home to several Chinese-funded projects including Gwadar port in warm waters of Arabian Sea.

Talha Ahmad, a Pakistani geopolitical researcher, said Islamabad and Tehran over the years worked on border fencing and established the Joint Rapid Reaction Force.

“But things have yet to improve due to the nature of threats,” Ahmad said, referring to separatist threats on the two sides of the border.

The two sides carried out several joint operations to rescue soldiers from the captivity of militants in Pakistan.

In February 2021, however, Jaish al-Adl militants killed 27 Revolutionary Guard members in a suicide bombing in Sisten-Baluchestan.

Later that year, the two sides “agreed” to increase the security cooperation between border forces and intelligence agencies when former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Tehran to move toward solving militancy issues on the border between the two nations.

According to Ahmad, “The difference (on two sides of the Pakistan-Iran border) is that the separatist movement in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan has both sectarian grounds (Sunni majority) as well as ethnic (Baloch), which naturally aligns both segments together. This has helped Jaish al-Adl to get popular support from the ground (inside Iran).

However, he claimed Pakistani security forces “have carried out several operations against Jaish al-Adl” across Balochistan, resulting in the arrest and killing of many of its top-tier leadership.

The arrested militants were later handed to Iran which executed them, Ahmad detailed on X.

“But this was always one-way traffic,” Ahmad said, citing no response from Tehran to Islamabad’s concerns over designated Baloch insurgent groups “residing in Iran.”