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ABC News Exclusive: The
Secret War Against Iran
ABC News
Wednesday April 3, 2007
Brian Ross and Christopher Isham
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.
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.
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.
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