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Israel/ Palestine

Israeli Mossad Agents allegedly Impersonated CIA in fostering Baluch Terrorism against Iran

Juan Cole 01/14/2012

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Mark Perry reveals that Israeli Mossad intelligence operatives pretended to be American field officers when contacting members of the Baluch Jundullah terrorist group, presumably in Pakistan, and funding and encouraging Jundullah to blow up targets in Iran.

Among Jundullah operations was a July, 2010, bombing of a Shiite mosque in Zahedan in July of 2010– which killed 27 innocent civilians and injured 169. It was blamed by Shiite authorities on the United States.

The province of Sistan and Baluchistan in Iran is dominated by members of the Baluch ethnic minority, who are Sunni and speak a distinctive Indo-Iranian language, in addition to Persian. Zahedan, the capital, has a lot of Persian Shiites from elsewhere in Iran.

If the allegations are true, they indict the right wing Israeli government on several counts:

1. Of being involved in terrorist operations against civilians and,

2. Of falsely implicating the US government in those terrorist operations, shifting blame onto the CIA and also encouraging Iranian counter-attacks on Americans.

Just to be clear, it is too soon to absolve US agencies from any involvement in Jundullah. But apparently from what Perry says, that would have been very indirect, through third or fourth parties. Washington is annoyed that Mossad made it look direct, in hopes of provoking Iranian terrorism against the US and ginning up a war.

Israeli right wing governments have often been perfidious “allies.” Their political agent in the United States, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has assiduously spied on America, garnering military, technological and trade secrets. The spying is so normal that when AIPAC fired the longtime head of its Mideast bureau, Steven Rosen, who had been caught passing classified Pentagon documents to the Israeli embassy, he sued AIPAC on the grounds that he was only acting as AIPAC operatives routinely did. That is, it was unfair to fire him for this offense, given the long history of domestic espionage conducted by that organization.

Likewise, the assassination by Mossad operatives in Dubai of alleged Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh involved massive identity theft by Israeli agents of names, passports and other information of nationals from countries considered friendly to Israel such as Australia and the UK. 1) Identity theft is wrong. 2) Stealing another person’s identity to commit murder is wrong, both because murder is a crime and because the consequences of the murder would then fall on an innocent. 3) Israel was clearly attempting to deflect a) international blame and b) any Hamas retaliation onto the innocent citizens of countries that supported Israel. That’s about as sleazy as you can get.

In the peculiar American system of legalized bribery, AIPAC has bought most US congressmen by organizing thousands of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups to give money to Congressional campaigns. AIPAC ought to have to register as an agent of a foreign country, but is allowed to so function without any let or hindrance, by the FBI, which really ought to intervene here.

The hypocrisy is so thick you could drown in it. The Israel lobbies have managed to configure the Hizbullah party-militia of Lebanon as a “terrorist” organization, when Hizbullah’s major military operations were defensive, aimed at expelling occupying, aggressive Israeli troops from Lebanese territory on which they had unlawfully squatted.

But when Mossad (pretending to be Americans) buys Baluchi agents to blow up innocent worshippers in mosques in Zahedan, that is defined away as not terrorism. Not only will there be no consequences for Israel for endangering American lives by impersonating CIA field officers, but it won’t even be reported in most American news outlets that Israel may have done so.

[Earlier post mistaken; Jundullah recently designated terrorist organization.]

In fact, Israel will be rewarded for bad behavior be even more taxpayer money in “aid” (Israel’s per capita income is greater than some European countries and it doesn’t need any American taxpayer money as aid). And, far right wing and very pernicious Israeli demands such as the unilateral annexation of Jerusalem and gradual expulsion of its Palestinian inhabitants, have been obsequiously adopted by the Republican presidential candidates.

Filed Under: Israel/ Palestine, Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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