PolicyWatch 2211
By Mehdi Khalaji
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Although Tehran worries about internal threats from Salafi jihadists, it
may well cooperate with such groups if they attack Western interests.
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On February 8, Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), a Salafist armed group in
Baluchistan, Iran, announced that it had taken five Iranian soldiers
hostage. On December 5, the same group killed three members of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In retaliation, the Iranian
judiciary immediately executed sixteen imprisoned members of the group.
Iranian officials have long blamed the West for instigating tensions
between Sunnis and Shiites. But in recent months, an unusual number of
official statements have indicated that Tehran views Salafist or
jihadist Islam not only as a threat to its interests in the Middle East,
but also as a national security threat that, mixed with ethnic
discontent in Baluchistan and Iran's western province of Kurdistan,
could turn to violence. For instance, on January 15, Iranian judiciary
chief Sadeq Larijani asked the intelligence services and the IRGC to
prevent infiltration of Salafists and takfiris (heretics) into Iranian
territories, pointing to concerns about Kurdistan and Baluchistan
becoming potential training grounds or battlegrounds for foreign
Salafist fighters (for background on the Salafist movement's growth in
Iran, see PolicyWatch 2150, "The Rise of Persian Salafism," http://washin.st/1fk1RrA).
Additional instances of Salafi jihadist activity at home and abroad have
unsettled Iranian officials. In October, Iranian media reported that a
group of radical Islamists had marched through the streets of Javanrud,
in Iranian Kurdistan, with black flags and swords, shouting "Allahu
Akbar" and intimidating the locals. According to Kurdpa, the Kurdistan
Press Agency, this group aims to assert its presence in the province. In
November, the al-Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed
responsibility for what it described as a double suicide attack on the
Iranian mission in southern Beirut, killing twenty-three people,
including an Iranian cultural attache. The same group claims it
conducted the two bombings that occurred in Beirut just yesterday. Such
attacks are likely an outgrowth of rising anti-Shiite sentiment among
Sunnis, stoked by Iran and Hezbollah's active support to Bashar
al-Assad's regime in Syria. Now Iranian leaders fear that anti-Shiite
acts could proliferate within Iranian territory.
OFFICIAL IRANIAN RELATIONS WITH KURDISH SALAFISTS
Iranian authorities have long harbored an ambiguous attitude toward the
country's Kurdish Salafists. On his May 12, 2009, trip to Kurdistan,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued this warning about Salafists: "Who are
those who want to destroy the nation's unity? These are [the] enemy's
agents...There are many poor and unaware Salafists and Wahhabis who are
fed by petrodollars to go here and there and carry on terrorist
operations, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other places...Today
this Wahhabi Salafist community regards Shiites as infidels...From where
does such a wrong idea stem?"
But the Iranian leadership does not view all Salafist groups equally,
and its treatment of individual groups can seem inconsistent at times.
For example, while the regime has cracked down forcefully on groups such
as Kataib Qaed fi Kurdistan and Navadegan Saladin in the past, members
of these groups have often cooperated with the regime, and Tehran has
been lenient so long as they do not pose a domestic threat. In contrast,
members of groups such as Jaish Sahabeh and Ansar al-Islam, which do
not cooperate with the regime and use anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian
propaganda, are frequently arrested, persecuted, and banned from
engaging in their activities.
Meanwhile, despite the significant restrictions placed on Salafist
activities and outreach since Khamenei's 2009 trip, several Salafist
clerics remain active. These include Mullah Abdolhamid (from Marivan and
active in Sanandaj and Javanrud), Mullah Mohammad Alavi (from Saqqez
but based in the village of Yekshaveh), Mullah Hadi Hermidol, Mullah
Osman Saqqez, and Mullah Hadi Oroomiyeh. In several cities, such as
Sanandaj, Salafists also have their Dar al-Quran (House of Quran), in
which they distribute books and CDs on Salafism and recruit members.
Moreover, rumors suggest that Salafists have run military training camps
near Sanandaj and Qasr Shirin.
According to a January 19 investigative report on the Radio Zamaneh
website by Iranian journalist Omid Pooyandeh, the Salafist presence in
Kurdistan dates back a decade. In 2003, when American forces attacked
Ansar al-Islam at its headquarters in Oraman in Iraqi Kurdistan, some of
the group's members fled to Iran. The IRGC did not prevent their
entrance, likely because Tehran believed they could be useful. According
to the report, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- a prominent jihadist leader and
eventual head of al-Qaeda in Iraq -- spent a few months in Iranian
Kurdistan, mobilizing many Baluch and Kurdish Salafi jihadists during
his stay.
In late 2003, some of the Ansar al-Islam members remaining in Iran
formed the group Kataib Qaed fi Kurdistan with Iranian Salafists. Its
goal was to enter Iraqi Kurdistan and wage jihad there, and it conducted
several operations across the border, purportedly including a failed
2005 assassination attempt against Mullah Bakhtiar, a Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan official. At one point, and for reasons unknown, the Iranian
regime barred the group from any further activities, arrested its
leader, and reportedly sentenced him to thirteen years in jail; he is
believed to be in Tehran's Evin Prison today. Following the crackdown,
many members moved to Afghanistan, and the group has since split into
several other groups, such as Navadegan Saladin and Jaish Sahabeh, which
have established strong connections to other Salafists in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. The Zamaneh report -- which drew from interviews with
Kurdish activists who spent time in prison with Salafists -- claims that
many members of these two groups have been arrested by Iranian
officials.
Overall, Kurdish sources set the number of imprisoned Salafists at about
300. They also say that the Iranian regime has killed about 250
Salafists since 2001.
SALAFI JIHADISTS IN BALUCHISTAN AND OTHER AREAS
Before Jaish al-Adl began operating in 2013, another Baluch group, known
as Jundallah and led by Abdol Malek Riggi, was conducting terrorist
operations in Baluchistan by kidnapping soldiers and IRGC members,
beheading them, and posting the videos online. Despite the group's small
size, it posed a serious security concern to the Iranian government for
years until 2009, when Riggi was arrested by Iranian intelligence and
executed shortly thereafter. Some Baluch analysts believe that
Jundallah, contrary to the group's claims, was motivated by ethnic
rather than religious discrimination. Some analysts suspect further that
earnings from drug smuggling provided a financial motivation for the
group. Whatever the true driver behind their activity, Jundallah and
Jaish al-Adl have both used Salafi jihadist rhetoric targeting Shiites
and the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian government's actions against what it views as threatening
Salafi jihadist activity continue today. According to a report by
Herana, a human rights news agency, nineteen Arab Sunnis were arrested
in Khuzestan in July 2013 because they wanted to perform their own Eid
al-Fitr prayer. And on December 4, four Sunni Arabs were executed in
Khuzestan on charges of creating an "Ahrar Brigade" -- "an armed group
that acts against national security and conducts military operations,"
according to the government.
U.S.-IRANIAN CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Some analysts in Washington have suggested a common interest for Iran
and the United States in fighting Salafi jihadists, even if they view
this threat in a different light. But there is a soft spot in such
analysis: the potential for Salafi jihadists to concentrate their
efforts against U.S. interests. In such cases, the Iranian regime may
well accommodate and even assist these groups, as it did against U.S.
interests during the Iraq war. Indeed, Iranian cooperation with al-Qaeda
appears to continue on some level, as seen in the U.S. Treasury
Department's February 5 designation of senior al-Qaeda member Jafar
al-Uzbeki. According to the release announcing the designation, Uzbeki
is part of an al-Qaeda network operating from Iran that has also moved
fighters into Pakistan and Afghanistan "and operates there with the
knowledge of Iranian authorities." The department added that this
network "uses Iran as a transit point for moving funding and foreign
fighters through Turkey to support al Qaeda-affiliated elements inside
Syria."
Iran's leadership does not fundamentally object to the Salafi jihadist
ideology of using violence to achieve a group's goals. Rather, it
objects to Salafi jihadists because it sees them as allies of the West.
When such groups use violence to threaten the regional interests of the
United States and its allies, Iran is unbothered. But when such groups
turn against Iran's interests -- as Salafists have done in the Syrian
war, and as Jaish al-Adl has done in Baluchistan -- Tehran sees them as a
necessary target for attack.
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Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute.
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