Iranian Student Unions Decry Death Sentences Of Protesters

The tit-for-tat strikes by the two countries are the highest-profile cross-border intrusions in recent years and have raised alarm about wider instability in the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7.

However, both sides have already signalled a desire to cool tensions, although they have had a history of rocky relations.

A statement from Pakistan's foreign office said Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani had spoken to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, on Friday, a day after Pakistan carried out strikes in Iran.

Iran said Thursday's strikes killed nine people in a border village on its territory, including four children. Pakistan said the Iranian attack on Tuesday killed two children.

"Foreign Minister Jilani expressed Pakistan’s readiness to work with Iran on all issues based on spirit of mutual trust and cooperation," the statement said. "He underscored the need for closer cooperation on security issues."

The contact follows a call between Jilani and his Turkish counterpart in which Islamabad said "Pakistan has no interest or desire in escalation".

The contacts come as Pakistan's Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar began a meeting of the National Security Committee, with all the military services chiefs in attendance, a source in the prime minister's Office told Reuters.

The meeting aims at a "broad national security review in the aftermath of the Iran-Pakistan incidents", Information Minister Murtaza Solangi said. Kakar cut short a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos and flew home on Thursday.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the two nations to exercise maximum restraint. The U.S. also urged restraint although President Joe Biden said the clashes showed that Iran is not well liked in the region.

Islamabad said it hit bases of the separatist Baloch Liberation Front and Baloch Liberation Army, while Tehran said its drones and missiles struck militants from the Jaish al Adl (JAA) group.

The militant groups operate in an area that includes Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan and Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. Both are restive, mineral-rich and largely underdeveloped.

(Report by Reuters)

Pakistan claimed the airstrikes were against alleged militant hideouts several kilometers inside Iranian borders at multiple locations in Saravan area which left at least twelve casualties, including several children.

This type of military confrontation between the two countries is unprecedented. Pakistan's airstrike, which occurred a day after the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) similarly targeted what it claimed were hideouts of Sunni militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan with missiles, marks the first attack by a foreign country inside Iranian soil since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).

“Missiles were fired into the Iranian soil after 35 years. No one can any longer boast of having protected the country from aggression. This is the result of allowing a group that constantly injects radicalism inside and abroad to grow, a self-appointed radical group that has got its hands on money and the media and has infiltrated decision-making structures,” political sociologist and social media researcher Mohammad Rahbari tweeted. 

Pakistan’s response Thursday to IRGC’s attack has been very firm, but many believe the Iranian authorities and state media’s reaction has been disproportionately mild and from a position of weakness.

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Iranian authorities, including Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and state media, have largely avoided referring to Pakistan as the perpetrator of the attack. Instead, they are describing the airstrikes as "explosions in a village in the border area."

“Three or four kilometers inside Iranian borders is not different from Tehran or Esfahan. The child that was killed is Iranian. He is a guest in our house even if he is not Iranian by virtue of [identity] documents. Security, in an equal manner, is the right of all residents of Iran,” Mohammad-Reza Javadi-Yeganeh, university professor, tweeted.

Shortly after the attack, Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, a senior IRIB journalist with very close ties to security and intelligence bodies, implied that Iran and Pakistan had coordinated the attack. Her claim has also angered many.

“And they think national power is not undermined if they tell the media [the attack] ‘had been coordinated’ and they can whitewash everything in this manner,” Rahbari wrote. “After hours I have yet not managed to digest these foul reactions.”

The authorities’ insistence on calling the victims of the attack “foreign nationals”, a term they always use to refer to Afghans in Iran, has also been very conspicuous and angered many. Some local sources claim the victims are among the undocumented Iranians living in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

The Shiite clerical regime has refused to issue national identity cards to thousands of Sunni Baluch people over the years, but its television and some loyalists have pretended that the Pakistani attack was not a problem, since those killed were not Iranians. This has prompted the most angry reactions on social media.

“How degenerate must a regime be to call Iran's children non-Iranians. Why? It cannot give a military response to Pakistan; therefore, it tries to gloss over the attack on Iranian soil and the killing of civilians. Pakistan's attack paved the way for other countries [to attack Iran] and showed how weak this regime is,” Youth of Isfahan Neighborhoods, a small dissident group in Esfahan, tweeted.

“To us, being a fellow countryman … is not a worthless piece of paper that you call a birth certificate. To us, those women and children are fellow countrymen even if they were Afghans or Pakistanis, the same way that you are un-Iranian and strangers whether you were born in Najaf [in Iraq as some Iranian politicians are] or in Esfahan,” another tweet with 2K of likes said.

A Dutch child of less than one year old had died in attacks by Iran on Erbil, Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot said in a statement.

She added she had asked her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for clarification and had summoned the Iranian ambassador.

Amirabdollahian, in comments quoted by Iran's state media, told Bruins Slot: "We don't have documentary proof about the killing of a child at the Mossad terrorist compound in northern Iraq."

"We are drawing the Dutch government's attention to the genocide and massacre of thousands of Palestinian women and children in Gaza," he added in the phone call.

Iran's IRGC launched missile and drone strikes on three neighboring countries in about one day. In the attack on Iraqi Kurdistan's capital Erbil, Iran destroyed the house of a well-know Iraqi Kurd, killing him and his family, including a toddler.

Provincial officials in Pakistan said two children were also killed in the IRGC's attack in Pakistan.

Having hit several locations in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan Monday, IRGC missiles and drones targeted Pakistan Tuesday, in an operation that Iran said was against two bases of the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl.

Iran’s missile strike in Iraq, however, is likely to deepen worries about worsening instability across the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas started on October 7, with Iran's militant proxy forces also entering the fray from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Jalal Hajavi, a 60-year-old resident of Sterling, Virginia, was sentenced to 24 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for his involvement in a scheme to export industrial goods from the United States to Iran. The shipments were routed through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and he had a co-conspirator located in Iran, according to the statement released Thursday.

Hajavi was convicted by a jury in September 2023 for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), smuggling, and unlawfully exporting and reexporting goods to Iran without a license.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said, “Mr. Hajavi illegally shipped industrial equipment to the Iranian regime, smuggled restricted goods through the UAE to Iran, and caused a shipping company to submit false information to the US government.”

According to Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod, “Shipping items to Iran is against the law, regardless of whether done directly or by way of a third country.”

“Hajavi’s conduct was particularly egregious because he was previously informed on at least two occasions that his conduct was prohibited,” saidUS Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia.

Iranian state media published the statement on Friday, that claimed several men belonging to different cells were identified and detained. The Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the January 3 bombings in Kerman during a memorial ceremony at the tomb of IRGC’s Qasem Soleimani. He was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

The deadly attack in Kerman prompted harsh criticism of Iran’s security and intelligence organizations for failing to anticipate and prevent the incident, while they were busy enforcing hijab on women. Since then, officials have made several claims of arrests. However, the Friday statement contained slightly more detail than previous claims.

Stating that ISIS is Israel’s creation, a claim often made by Tehran officials, the intelligence ministry said they arrested two people who entered the country after the January 3 bombing, intending to stage new attacks. It also said that people directly linked to the Kerman bombing were arrested and caches of explosives and weapons seized.

It is often very difficult to verify such statements by Iranian security forces, as access and information is strictly controlled. So far, none of the detainees have been reliably identified. Authorities have provided some names, which might be just pseudonyms.

Following the Kerman incident, Iran launched ballistic missiles earlier this week on targets in Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria and Pakistan, saying it was avenging a series of attacks in Iran. Pakistan retaliated by striking a rural area in southeastern Iran, leading to high tensions in the region.