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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Iran fires back at the West | |
| 2007-03-08 | |
TEHRAN - As a Shi'ite-majority country with several large ethnic groups such as the Kurds, Arabs and Balochs that follow the Sunni faith, Iran has for years been vulnerable to unrest, riots and terrorist attacks that officials routinely attribute to foreign powers. "Iranian intelligence services have acquired information that shows the United States, Britain and Israel have been behind the unrest in various parts of Iran, including Khuzestan, Kordestan and West Azarbaijan, in the past few years," Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, Iran's intelligence minister, was quoted as saying by the Aftab News Agency. A car-bomb attack last month by the separatist Jundullah (also called Popular Iranian Resistance Movement) in the southeastern city of Zahedan, which killed 13 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, triggered clashes between security forces and guerrillas of the PJAK, a separatist Kurdish party, around the city of Khoy in northwestern Iran. "In the past one and a half years and following air raids on PJAK bases in northern Iraq, clashes with the Iranian military have increased. The clashes used to occur at border points mostly, but the recent encounter was more intense and occurred inside Iranian soil," the Aftab News Agency quoted Abed Fattahi, representative of Oroumiyeh in Parliament, as saying. A Revolutionary Guard helicopter crashed last Friday 17 kilometers inside the Iranian border, killing its two high-ranking commanders and seven other military staff. The guerrilla group that claimed responsibility has connections with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has bases in Turkey and northern Iraq. The same group blew up the Iran-Turkey gas pipeline last September. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |