Exchanging fire with a neighbour

For the last seven decades, Pakistanis and most of their leaders have always assumed that majority Muslim countries are Pakistan’s natural allies.

This has defied the logic of international relations, which have generally been based on the notion of national interests rather than natural affinity based on shared religion. Last week’s exchange of fire with brotherly next door neighbour Iran serves as a reminder of how real or perceived national interest trumps shared faith or ideology.

Pakistan and, since 1979’s Islamic revolution, Iran speak the language of Islamic solidarity, but both have had to deal with harsh political realities that do not neatly follow religious lines. Iran’s clerical regime has been accused of stirring trouble in the Middle East against fellow Muslim governments for years, allegedly through armed proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, sectarian militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has justified its policies by arguing that its conflict with governments of other Muslim states is caused by the willingness of those governments to subordinate themselves to Western interests. But judged even by its own rhetoric, Iran’s recent decision to strike three ostensibly friendly countries – Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan – made little sense except in the context of Iran’s domestic politics. Iranian legislative elections are scheduled for March 1 and striking in every direction might have been an attempt to project the Iranian regime’s power ahead of these elections.

Iran’s foreign minister implied in a statement in Davos on the day of the strike in Pakistan’s Balochistan province that Iran was not attacking these Muslim countries; its target were groups it believed to be connected to powers inimical to Muslims. But, like much grandiloquence about ‘enemies of Islam’, there was little evidence that the targets of Iran’s strikes had anything to do with any external power.

Iran –as self-professed champion of anti-Israel and anti-US sentiment –has made significant political gains from the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas and the ensuing war in Gaza, which has resulted in massive Palestinian civilian casualties. But its decision to launch missile attacks in Syria and Iraq on Monday January 15, and in Pakistan on Tuesday January 16 was risky. It involved violating the sovereignty of countries that are not overtly hostile to Iran.

Pakistan’s decision to strike back surprised the regime in Tehran. Iranian diplomats scrambled to point out that Iran does not intend to make an enemy of its nuclear armed Muslim neighbour. Pakistan’s pushback demonstrated the limits of Iran’s capabilities and Tehran’s strategy of using chaos in the greater Middle East to emerge as the region’s pre-eminent power.

Iran’s strikes were rooted in the need of its current leaders to look powerful at home and had no religious or ideological reason whatsoever. Iran claimed it was targeting the Islamic State, which operates from parts of Syria and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, whom Iran blamed for a January 3 terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Kerman. In what was described as Iran’s worst domestic attack since the Islamic Revolution, two bombs had killed 84 Iranians gathered on the anniversary of the assassination by the United States of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard general, Qasem Soleimani.

But none of the three countries targeted for attacks –Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan – condone either ISIS or have any sympathy for Mossad. Iran’s drone and missile attack inside Pakistan was supposedly meant to target the terrorist group Jaish al Adl that operates in Iran’s Balochistan-Sistan province. That goal could have been easily achieved by sharing intelligence with Pakistan and asking Pakistani authorities to act against the group.

Pakistan’s air strikes two days later targeted alleged hideouts of separatist groups based on the Iranian side of the border. This was the first aerial assault inside Iran by a foreign country since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. If Iran’s goal had been to avenge the terrorist attack in Kerman, lobbing missiles into Pakistan proved not to be a smart response. It only ended up inviting retaliation from a brotherly neighbour.

Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Pakistan has tried hard not to let differences with Iran turn into conflict. For decades, both countries have faced insurgencies in their Baloch provinces and have usually managed to sporadically cooperate along their 900-kilometer-long border. Between cooperation, Iran and Pakistan have also accused each other of harbouring insurgents involved in attacks on each other. But there was no recent provocation along the Iran-Pakistan border and Iran has not offered a credible explanation for why it added Pakistan to the list of countries where it sought to flex its muscle.

As the two sides repair their bruised relationship, Iran’s leaders must ask themselves if their initial strike inside Pakistan achieved any strategic or even tactical purpose. Pakistan, meanwhile, has to figure out how to deal with being painted as the home of Jihadi militants. That image first attracted drone strikes by the US inside Pakistan and later India’s purported attack on a militant training camp. Now, it is Iran striking what it says is a terrorist training site.

Iran’s action put Pakistan in a position where it had to hit back. Allowing a missile strike inside Pakistani territory by one neighbour would have set a bad precedent for Pakistan’s other neighbours, India and Afghanistan, with whom Pakistan’s relations are currently far from cordial. Pakistan’s decision to retaliate might also have been driven by suspicion of collusion between Iran and India.

After exchanging missile strikes, both sides have gone back to talking about their ‘brotherly’ ties and will most likely go back to normal relations.

But the incident, and its context, serves as a wake-up call to those who still spout unrealistic statements about the ‘Ummah’ and insist that foreign relations should be guided by their religious emotions rather than realpolitik.

The writer, former ambassador of Pakistan to the US, is Diplomat-in-Residence at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC.