IRGC Rules Out Any Compromise Over Its Freedom Of Action

Hasan Kazemi-Qomi, President Ebrahim Raisi's special envoy for Afghanistan, told the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) linked Fars news agency that the Taliban border guards had violated Iran’s territory and the Iranian side had stopped their activities and this gave rise to tension in the border area.

Kazemi Qomi said Tehran had contacted the Taliban interior and defense ministries and stressed that all construction had to be stopped and the dispute needed be resolved by a joint commission.

Iran state television quoted the commander of Iran's border guard regiment in the area, Colonel Mohammad Cheragh, as saying that the matter would be settled by "experts" from both sides and that the situation was calm in the border areas.

Unconfirmed reports by Afghan sources said earlier on Saturday that five Iranian border guards had been detained after they tried to stop the Taliban from laying asphalt on a road in the border area.

Clashes were also reported between Iranian border guards and the Taliban in early December.

Ajmal Omar Shinwari, a former spokesman of Afghan Armed Forces, on Saturday told Iran International TV's Afghan channel that the Taliban do not have control over all their forces some of whom have no proper military training and that the actions of some groups from among the Taliban could cause the country's neighbors to feel danger.

The Islamic Republic first welcomed the Taliban victory in August 2021, presenting it as a defeat for the United States, but terror attacks against Shiite Afghans later led to protests in Iran and warnings from Tehran that the Taliban must protect minorities. Iran has also been demanding an inclusive government in Afghanistan, while the Taliban have kept their tight control.

In early April tensions rose between Iran and the Taliban over Afghan protesters' attack on the Iranian consulate in Herat which led to a halt in Iran's consular services in the country. Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) linked Tasnim news agency alleged that "western-backed" political groups were behind the attack on the Iranian consulate.

Iranian officials have condemned Friday's blast at the Mawlavi Sekandar Sunni Mosque in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, as well as Thursday's attack at a Shia Mosque in Mazar-e Sharif, also in northern Afghanistan, for which Daesh claimed responsibility. No one has taken responsibility for the attack on the Sunni Mosque yet.

President Ebrahim Raisi said Saturday that the "current rulers of Afghanistan (Taliban)" have a responsibility to protect the lives of Muslims and take action against "rogue elements who viciously target ordinary people and public security" in Afghanistan. In the same speech, he called Daesh "the offspring of Western spy services and the Israeli regime."

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh on Friday expressed deep concern over the recent terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. The attack on the Sunni Mosque in Kunduz following one on a Shiite Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif, clearly shows the "evil goals of the terrorists serving as mercenaries for foreigners", he said, adding that they seek to "create a civil war in Afghanistan.”

Tasnim news agency close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said that apparently the disagreement between the two sides emerged when the Taliban wanted to build a road near the border crossing Dogharoon but denied reports about clashes. Tasnim said that Iranian forces and representatives of the Taliban were trying to defuse the situation.

However, the agency also said that cargos at Dogharoon crossing has been moved to a safer distance as precaution.

A video on social media shows an Iranian military vehicle seized by the Taliban as six Iranian border guards are seen standing nearby. A local Taliban official confirmed the seizure, saying the vehicle had entered Afghanistan, Tolo News in Kabul reported.

Some Afghan citizens reported on social media that the reason for the border tension was an attempt by Iran to build two observation posts and a road.

There have been some incidents at the border since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last year. An Iranian foreign ministry official in January said that the reason for an earlier incident of clashes between Iranian forces and the Taliban was lack of professional conduct by the latter.

In a phone call with Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian Friday evening, Josep Borell said the pause in the Vienna negotiations, which broke off March 14, was not constructive and called for fresh talks between Enrique Mora, the senior EU official chairing the process, and Iran’s lead negotiatorAli Bagheri-Kani.

Iran and the United States, which left the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, are reportedly unable to agree over Washington removing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) from its list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations.’ Former US president Donald Trump, who took the US out of the nuclear agreement in 2018 and imposed stringent sanctions, added the IRGC to the list in 2019.

“The Biden administration should have the audacity to rectify the White House’s past mistakes,” Amir-Abdollahian told Borrell in the phone call, according to state-owned Press TV. “There is no doubt about the Iranian government’s will to reach a good, strong, and sustainable agreement…The White House should end its excessive demands and its indecision and walk down the path of realism and resolution.”

The US is only indirectly involved in the Vienna talks over reviving the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), but its role is key in deciding which sanctions are incompatible with the agreement and thereby persuading Tehran to reverse steps in its nuclear program taken since 2019 beyond JCPOA limits.

According to Iranian media, Amir-Abdollahian told Borrell that the other participants in the talks − China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom − were “ready to finalize agreement” on reviving the JCPOA.

Washington has said its listing of the IRGC is unrelated to the JCPOA and that it will not negotiate the delisting without Iranian concessions "outside the purview of the JCPOA,” a reference to regional security and defense issues.

The Biden administration has come under increasing domestic pressure by most Republicans and some Democrats not to remove the Revolutionary Guard from its terrorist list.

Some argue that the Trump administration designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization to complicate a return to the nuclear deal, but others citing its long list of extraterritorial activities, including support for militant groups say that the designation is well deserved.

A former Iranian diplomat, Ali Jannati, recently claimed that under former President Hassan Rouhani, Iran received a pledge from the Biden administration that to revive the JCPOA it was ready to lift all sanctions introduced by Trump, including the FTO listing of the IRGC and the 2019 executive order allowing sanctioning of individuals linked to the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A former Rouhani official, Alireza Moezzi, argued Friday that Jannati could be right, on the grounds that American and European officials had not contradicted him.

Brigadier General Hossein Almassi, the commander of IRGC’ Brigade 100 in Sistan-Baluchistan province, was unhurt after the attack and the attackers were arrested according to authorities.

However, the Baluch Activists’ Campaign, a dissident group, claimed Almassi was wounded and taken to Zahedan’s Nabi Akram hospital. The group said his condition is critical.

Mahmoud Absalan, the bodyguard who was killed in the attack that occurred near a checkpoint near the provincial capital Zahedan, was the son of Almassi’s deputy. The attackers fired from a vehicle.

Brigade 110 known as the Salman Farsi brigade during the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s was under the command of Qasem Soleimani, who later headed IRGC’s notorious Qods (Quds) Force and was killed in a targeted US air strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

The attack came on a night celebrated by many Shiite Iranians as the holiest, which this year coincided with events marking the anniversary of the Revolutionary Guards' establishment after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The predominantly Sunni Muslim Sistan-Baluchistan province near the Pakistani and Afghan borders has long been plagued by unrest from both drug smuggling gangs and Sunni Islamist militants fighting the country's Shi’ite authorities.

Many of Iran's Sunnis complain of discrimination, a charge denied by the state.

In 2009, a suicide bomber killed six senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and more than 29 other people in Sistan-Baluchistan, in one of the boldest attacks on Iran's most powerful military institution.

With reporting by Reuters

The Interior Ministry in Kabul announced the man, named only as ‘Mostafa,’ and his still-at-large accomplice ‘Alireza’ were negotiating over a price well short of the balloon’s cost. The ministry said Mostafa was from the central province of Uruzgan.

The balloon is a tethered aerial detection system known as the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) and is used to detect missiles, drones, piloted aircraft, boats, and ground vehicles. JLENS has surveillance radar scans in all directions and can provide constant, 360-degree coverage extending 550km.

In the weeks before and after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, the Taliban seized weapons and equipment left by fleeing Afghan forces. Reuters suggested last year that US intelligence assessed Afghanistan’s new rulers acquired more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.

According to Reuters, between 2002 and 2017, the United States transferred to the Afghan military around $28 billion in weaponry, including rockets, night-vision goggles, and intelligence-gathering drones.