The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) announced the death of two of its Basij paramilitary fighters in southeastern Iran this week, claiming they had been ”martyred” in a “terrorist attack in the city of Saravan in the southeastern province of Sistan-and-Baluchestan.”
This is the latest in several attacks and battles between Iran’s security forces and fighters in southeastern Iran who oppose the regime.
Iran’s regime now finds itself facing increasing dissent and challenges at home. The Baloch region is not the only place where groups oppose the regime. Other minorities dislike the regime as well, including Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and also Persians. Iran’s regime relies on pitting these groups against each other and relying on elements of each group as a pillar of the regime’s stability.
It is incorrect to characterize the regime as having no backers in its periphery, as it is always able to work with and co-opt some people. Its peripheries are also geographically divided from one another.
For instance, Baloch fighters who oppose the regime are closer to the Baloch region of Pakistan than they are to the far-off Kurdistan region in Iran, and the Kurds are closer to their comrades across the border in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq than they are to Arabs in southwestern Iran. The regime is happy to keep this accident of history and geography as is.
Iran facing resistance
The Iranian regime faces resistance at home even as it has been supporting “resistance” against Israel, the US, and their partners and allies in the Middle East for decades. Iran’s proxies are often known as the “axis of resistance,” and Iran uses the term “resistance” to refer to the attacks by Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and others.
However, Iran’s ability to fund the “resistance” abroad is hampered by challenges at home. It must balance this carefully if it does not want a major revolt on its hands. When the regime oversteps its bounds, such as with the murder of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman, in 2022, it has to wait out the protests. Amini’s murder resonated in the Kurdistan region and throughout Iran and the diaspora.
The regime is content to wait things out when necessary. It knows the opposition abroad is also divided. The regime has survived for so long, despite being disliked, through the use of force and the use of coy policies that make the regime seem less heavy-handed than it is.
Iranian state media sometimes hints at the troubles the regime has at home. This is why, on Monday, Iran’s IRNA published details about the two Basij members killed in Saravan in the southeastern province of Sistan-and-Baluchestan.
“The Public Relations Office of the IRGC Ground Force’s Quds Headquarters in southeast Iran issued a statement on Monday, announcing the martyrdom of the two members of Basij, which is a volunteer force within the IRGC,” IRNA said.
“According to the statement, gunmen attacked the pair as they were in their car on the way back home from their work on Monday morning.”
There appears to be a low-level insurgency developing in this southeastern region. Iran’s Mehr News Agency said that the IRGC had killed “23 terrorists and captured 46 others” during a recent operation.
“Security and police personnel in the province often conduct operations in the border areas to foil terror plots and capture arms and drugs smuggled by terrorist and other groups. The Sistan-and-Baluchestan province, which borders Pakistan, has witnessed several terror attacks targeting both civilians and security forces over the past years,” Brig.-Gen. Ahmad Shafaei said, according to the report.
Iran, which backs terrorism against Israel, also got the UN Security Council to denounce an attack against Iran at the end of October.
“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the cowardly terrorist attack on a patrol unit of the Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran… in Sistan and Baluchistan province, Iran, on October 26. The attack was claimed by the Jaish al-Adl and resulted in the tragic loss of life of 10 Iranian law enforcement personnel,” the UN noted.
