Iran’s attack: stratagem or silliness?

Anyone in their sane mind in Iran would have had to be on a stratospheric high to put to test a managed border. Borders are either hostile or contested; or managed and peaceful. Iran has its own set of troubles — far too many in strategic terms than Pakistan which is grappling with its own set of challenges. But her border with Pakistan would generally be classified peaceful/managed. Through history the two nations have been allies, close friends, good neighbours and brotherly Muslims to each other. There was a time Iran stood behind Pakistan with military supplies in wars. Even after the Islamic revolution and an accentuation in sectarian definition of the new regime this bond has stood the test of time. Iran was the first nation to accord recognition to Pakistan at its independence and Pakistan returned the favour to the Islamic regime after the revolution in 1979.

Iran’s ongoing predicaments and its pariah status among the comity of nations — largely unfair over such a length of time — notwithstanding, both Iran and Pakistan have sustained and managed their relations well. Indian efforts to use Iran as a base against Pakistan — Indian naval spy Kulbhushan Jadhav who used Chahbahar as his base of operations is still in Pakistani custody — or the infrequent forays of inimical militant elements across the border have seen reactive pursuits by both sides on occasions and yet sustained the relationship through cooperative intelligence helping each other. The dissolution of Jundullah, the Pak-Balochistan based anti-Iran group and the arrest of its leaders, the Regi brothers, stand testimony to how the two nations have tended to come together in the times of need. When Iran, under sanctions by the US, lost its diplomatic presence in Washington, Pakistan tended to Iran’s diplomatic needs as its minder.

And yet someone somewhere decided to check Pakistan out. The larger refrain was of someone in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) — Iran’s parallel military structure which controls the country’s missile force — gone rogue or lost their marbles but knowing how deep and how strategic the Iranians are in their undertakings this was unlikely. Let’s deconstruct the developing strategic scenario around Iran: Israel has gone crazy on hapless Gaza. With little fightback from the now rag-tag Hamas she has begun to view the opportunity to rope all targets in. The world at large has known Iran as the principal base of support for Hamas — though Israel in its own great imagination has also been an equal opportunity patron to Hamas against the PLO with an aim to weaken a unified Palestinian approach to a separate state.

Ditto, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthis in Yemen who have kept the pressure of war on Saudi Arabia since 2015 and are now the disruptors of international shipping in the Red Sea, are all known as Iran’s lackeys heavily supported and influenced if not controlled by Iran. With all three now in the ambit of an expanding war the ultimate Israeli aim is to somehow engulf Iran into it to neutralise the real base of Israel’s opposition. The US and the UK have both entered war in Yemen against the Houthis — by extension, Iran — as the ring of fire closes on Iran.

Iran would have felt the heat of this circle of fire closing around it. A couple of terror incidents within Iran may have made it just too hot to bear. Apparently, Iran began weighing its options. She could wait till fire and flame knocked at its doors and then it would be too late. Or signal a resolve in some shape of its capacity and willingness to deter further expansion and enhance its own perimeter of security by demonstrating its reach and intent. She targeted an alleged Mossad base in Irbil, Iraq and Kurd targets in Syria. The Syrian targets were long range and exhibited both reach and precision of Iran’s missiles. Israeli presence in Iraq had been a source of constant bother and irritation and was thus a valid target except that Iran had no qualms in violating the sanctity of the borders of its two neighbouring states. She chose to trump international norms and established its own rules mimicking the US and Israel. That she went a step further and attacked Pakistan was most intriguing.

Pakistan, other than being a friendly country of decades-long association and close harmony in most difficult times in each nation’s history, is a reputed and tested military power with an established nuclear capability. To test it with a cross-border attack was either foolhardy or some serious signaling or extraordinary stratagem. Iran fears expanding war to engulf it; a possibility which worries it endlessly as wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen refuse to die. She perceives these as concentric circles of ever-closing rings of fire. She has thus resorted to convey a message to the world of the ultimate resort — doomsday — by militarily engaging a nuclear country: ‘If the war is to expand and engulf Iran, it shall engulf the entire region’. That it also demonstrated the lethality of her organic military and missile capability was inherent but the larger message in this entire undertaking was holding to ransom the hostile with a knife at the throats of the unrelated. This was savage blackmail. International relations are about respecting norms and conventions and calculated risks if those serve a well-intended purpose; else one gets termed a pariah.

Israel will have its own act to explain, if not today, in time. The US will ride through its indiscretions around its unmatched power though she too will need to pay for such brashness elsewhere. But when an equal power resorts to an act which seems desperate even if founded on apparent logic it brings unnecessary and untold harm and diminishes resident power in missteps. Pakistan did well to indicate restoration and repair and saved both itself and Iran from an ill-founded and ill-timed misadventure hurting both equally.

Pakistan’s military response was proportionate, targeted against its own criminals harbouring in Iran while clearly drawing lines of caution and warning to anyone thinking unwisely. Five years back when India aggressed without reason, Pakistan displayed its military acumen and potential in a surgical display of a coordinated and composite application from among its potent capacity to deliver home a clear message and resolve against unprovoked aggression. In her response to Iran’s misstep, newer and diverse technologies were applied in yet another display of synergetic application of resident capacity and inherent capability. It is not in numbers but in force multiplication through synergy that effects are created. West Asia escaped a self-generated insanity by a whisker and retained its sense of preservation and rationality. Bigger and more poignant threats exist elsewhere. The message though has gone far and wide.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2024.

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