Iran trapped in a ring of unrest
Atimes / Atimes
21-Oct-2009 (one comment)

Contrary to some local and international reporting, Shooshtari had not been a member or commander in the IRGC's fabled Quds Corps, the foreign special operations unit of the Revolutionary Guards. The confusion may have arisen because of Shooshtari's ties to the Quds garrison (no relation to the Quds Corps), which is one of the main national operational headquarters of the IRGC.

Details of the early morning attack are still sketchy, but IRGC sources now rule out a second suicide bomber. The lone suicide bomber is believed to have hid explosives on his body and detonated them as he approached the senior IRGC commanders. The sheer scale of the loss has led some Iranian and international media to speculate about a "sophisticated" operation, but all the available information in the local media and information supplied by IRGC and intelligence sources in Tehran point to a simple and straight-forward suicide bomb attack.

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Shah Ghollam

Interesting details about Rigi's terrorist group

by Shah Ghollam on Wed Oct 21, 2009 07:39 PM PDT

Arguably the biggest local challenge is organized crime, in particular the daily transit of narcotics across the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. In September 2007, a senior Iranian intelligence officer told this author that in a meeting with a top Pakistani Balochi drug baron in 2003 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Iranians were offered a tantalizing deal. For unmolested trafficking of narcotics across the Iran-Pakistan border, the drug lords were willing to pay the Iranian government an annual tax of US$1 billion; promised not to distribute any of the contraband within Iran and pledged to hunt down and kill "enemies of the state" (namely armed Iranian Balochi secessionists) in Pakistani Balochistan.

Interestingly, the meeting had been brokered by the ISI; and only took place after Pakistani guarantees that they would prevent hostile American surveillance. The senior intelligence officer told this author that his curt response to the offer by the drug baron was that "I deal with God, not with you".

 



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