BRIAN ROSS REPORTS
- Like Jay-Z + the Beatles, But Worse
- Update: Help for Homeless Children
- Bush Era, Revised -- and with More Barbeque
- The Tax Woman Cometh
- Paging Mr. Stanford: Antigua Called
- Who Are You Calling Partisan?
- Update: IRS Won't Use Private Debt Collectors
- But Is It Art?
- PMA Scandal a Sore Point for Dems in 2010?
- Down in Flames
- A New Mystery for RNC Chief
- PMA Clients Were Big Givers
- Raided Lobby Firm Still a Force on Capitol Hill
- Stanford Update: Another $143 Mil Found
- Cheney, Hooked on Controversy
TOP BLOTTER CATEGORIES
- Abramoff Lobbying Scandal
- American Al Qaeda
- Avian Flu
- Beirut Hospital Out of Gas
- Cheney
- CIA
- CIA Secret Prisons
- D.C. Madam Affair
- FBI
- Federal Air Marshal Service
- Homeland Security
- Hurricane Katrina
- IRS
- Mark Foley Internet Scandal
- Millionaire Sex Scandal
- Nigerian E-mail Scams
- Norman Hsu, Clinton Fundraiser
- NSA: Wiretapping
- Osama bin Laden
- Payola
- Pharmacy Investigation
- PMA
- Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert
- Stanford
- Steele
- Terror
- Troopergate
- U.K. Airline Terror Plot
- U.K. Bombing Attempts
- Wen Ho Lee
- William Jefferson
- Zarqawi
« Previous | Main | Next »
ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran
Email
Print
ShareApril 03, 2007 5:25 PM
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.
It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.
THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS
U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.
Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.
Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.
The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.
"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.
"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said.
Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.
Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack.
They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in Pakistan.
The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.
A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group.
Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.
A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context.
Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
April 3, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (274)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Makes sense...not really a new story, tho. What makes Brian and Chris' reporting fairly incomplete is that they make no mention of Jundullah's objectives (which is half the story here). WHY is this group going into Iran and attacking the Iranian military? Look it up. Anyway, If you are the enemy of my enemy, I'll let you get away with being an ally of another of my enemies.
Posted by: Jazz | Apr 3, 2007 5:41:36 PM
I guess that makes the US a state sponsor of terrorism. Can we invade ourselves?
Posted by: Kevin | Apr 3, 2007 5:42:47 PM
And whats the point of us knowing this and getting out?
Posted by: Seth | Apr 3, 2007 5:45:47 PM
Is he going to turn out like the other figureheads the US once supported, like, oh I don't know, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein??
Posted by: Nick | Apr 3, 2007 5:46:09 PM
IF this is true, doesn't this sound just like the kind of relationship the US had with Osama bin Ladin in the 80s, when he was fighting the Soviets? When will we ever learn to not share the bed with these kinds of people?
Posted by: Blah | Apr 3, 2007 5:46:40 PM
Terrorism against Iran - well they live by the sword, they can die by the sword, too. Fight fire with fire.
Posted by: Rod M | Apr 3, 2007 5:50:05 PM
No wonder the whole world hates the U.S. - the only terrorism we will allow is that which supports our causes.
Posted by: Embarrassed Citizen | Apr 3, 2007 5:57:33 PM
Al-qaeda was the enemy of our enemy, turns out they usually because out enemies also eventually.
Either way we are supporting terrorists in the war on terror.
Posted by: Paul | Apr 3, 2007 6:09:50 PM
More Bush & Cheney mischief at loose in the World--no wonder the Iranians don't trust America. Our tax dollars going down the rathole that may likely come back to haunt us.
Posted by: jude | Apr 3, 2007 6:10:39 PM
A prelude to making the argument for U.S. Iranian intervention: that Sepah-e Pasdaran is operating in Iraq sponsoring terrorism against American and coalition forces. Who better to build the case than captured high ranking Iranian military officers admitting as much?
Posted by: JR | Apr 3, 2007 6:14:32 PM
This story is just part of the pattern. The Bush administration is determined to start a war in the middle east and Iran is just their latest target. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if this was all part of the plan with the British to destabilize relationships, leak warmongering and fear creating stories to the American people in an attempt to finally get their World War III.
Posted by: Shar | Apr 3, 2007 6:15:18 PM
Golly, gee. More of our tax dollars being wasted on state sponsored terrorism, not to mention the blood on our hands. When will the lunacy stop? We're not fighting fire with fire, we're STARTING THE FIRE!!!
Posted by: Gale Ann | Apr 3, 2007 6:17:49 PM
Thankyou ABC News.
At a time when negotiations over 15 Royal nave personnel comes to a critical stage, you decide to publish this.
If the United Kingdom is a friend of the United States, I hate to think what you do when the French are involved.
Is someone suffering from brain fade, or are you acting on Bush's instructions as a lead up to the attacks on Good Friday?
Posted by: Chris | Apr 3, 2007 6:19:14 PM
Which is worse:
1) USA as a sponsor of terrorism or
2) USA as major hypocrit?
Posted by: Opie Dey | Apr 3, 2007 6:21:17 PM
This is exactly what Cheney meant when he referred to the "dark side." Mr. Cheney, some news: you are a state-sponsor of terrorism.
Posted by: Mike | Apr 3, 2007 6:22:44 PM
I'm not sure what the journalists' objectives are for telling a story like this. Is the story even true?
Posted by: ALFRED SISON | Apr 3, 2007 6:23:05 PM
The constant repetition that we supported Osamma in some way is really tiresome. Read "T=the Looming Towers" if you are interested in facts (which I doubt). Osamma was not among the Afghani's we supported against the Russians. He and his 'Arabs' were foundering around in Pakistan and performed very little combat.
As for supporting Saddam that has also been overblown. Only 2 percent of his armaments were from the US and some of those were obtained illegally. Just like the kidnapping of these British "Marines" Iran committed an act of war by holding our embassy personnel. Since we had a President who was missing his male gender, why should we not have taken satisfaction the conflict between him and Iran? He didn't turn into a major head case until later.
Rather than VERY indirectly supporting guerrilla activity (reciprocity for Iran's activities which results in our the death of our troops) would you prefer we just nuke Iran and get it over with?
Posted by: red | Apr 3, 2007 6:25:17 PM
I understand that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it -- but do our leaders have to forget the past so often?
This is pathetic and embarrassing and will bite us on the butt in a couple decades. And then President Jenna will fund the neo-Baathists or Taliban3.0 to get these evil Jundullah leaders "dead or alive."
Posted by: Eric | Apr 3, 2007 6:25:56 PM
The dot the story misses drawing to is that the US is in effect supporting al Qaeda.
Posted by: Disputo | Apr 3, 2007 6:26:04 PM
Congress needs to find the N.S.A intercepts of Cheney's phone calls to Al-Qaeda.
Posted by: K. Trout | Apr 3, 2007 6:29:56 PM
Post a comment
