Iran is battling a surge in attacks by separatist militants in its southeast, compounding the country’s security challenges while it’s on alert amid U.S. threats of renewed airstrikes.
At least eight members of Iran’s security forces have been killed in the past three weeks in the Sistan and Baluchestan province, according to state media. The province is a Sunni-majority region that shares a porous border with Pakistan and Afghanistan and is also home to Iran’s Baluch ethnic minority.
A police officer and female member of Iran’s Basij militia were the latest to be killed in an attack by armed militants close to the town of Mehrestan on Wednesday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Other recent casualties include a senior IRGC commander who died “while confronting enemy-backed terrorists” and a provincial official who was killed in a roadside bomb, according to the state-run Hamshahri newspaper and Islamic Republic News Agency.
The latest spike in violence comes as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran nears its ninth month and Washington and Tehran remain deadlocked over their efforts to control the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. “may” act against Iran before midterm elections on Nov. 3. Iran’s army chief Amir Hatami said last week that the war hasn’t ended and the military would maintain its readiness in case of further American attacks, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Restive province
Iranian authorities have for years fought armed Sunni insurgents in Sistan and Baluchestan, which is Iran’s poorest province, often accusing the U.S. and Israel of using militant groups like Jaysh al-Adl to foment instability. Jaysh al-Adl is designated a terrorist group by both Iran and the U.S.
A parliamentary delegation visited the province last week due to concerns over the clashes and the impact of the U.S.-Israeli war.
Lawmakers and security officials “inspected the border wall construction and sealing operations being carried out by the IRGC,” Fadahossein Maleki, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, said in an interview with the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Poverty, workers’ rights, water scarcity and the state’s marginalization of ethnic Baluchis stoke frequent protests against local authorities that often turn deadly.
In 2021, security forces killed at least 12 people when they opened fire on fuel traders who’d swarmed a border post during a protest. In 2022, rights groups said at least 96 people were killed by security forces when they opened fire on protests in Zahedan during the Woman Life Freedom movement.
—With assistance from Eltaf Najafizada and Patrick Sykes.
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