Among the armed groups rumored to take part in the incursion into Iran, backed by the US and Israel, is the Army of Justice (Jaish al-Adl), a Baloch militia with alleged roots in al-Qaeda that operates along Iran's southeastern border with Pakistan.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing The Atlantic, the militia formed a political group called the Popular Fighters Front in December - a secular-sounding name apparently chosen to allay outside concerns. But jihadists still make up the backbone of its forces.
The Baloch, like the Kurds, are mostly Sunni - making both communities religious minorities in a nation that is 90 percent Shiite. This shared status has placed them at the center of US and Israeli plans to pressure the Islamic Republic through ethnic insurgency following the killing of Iran's leader.
The involvement of jihadist elements is one of the most explosive aspects of the operation. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), another armed opposition group, is also rumored to be part of the plan. The MEK was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department before being delisted in 2012, and many Iranians view it as a cult with an ideology mixing Islam and Marxism.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned that "fostering an armed ethnic insurgency in Iran would be the mother of all strategic, moral, and political mistakes" and predicted it would lead to a failed state. The fear among many Iranians is that the agendas of ethnic militias are territorial and separatist - and that their empowerment could push the country toward disintegration.
The core of the planned incursion remains Kurdish: six Iranian Kurdish parties have formed a coalition and gathered thousands of fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan. But the potential participation of jihadist and cult-like organizations alongside them threatens to undermine whatever legitimacy the operation might claim - and gives the Islamic Republic a powerful propaganda tool to rally Iranians against the attackers.
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