Tehran has long maintained that Jundullah is supported by the United States, Great Britain and Israel. Now, the newly disclosed fact that this bloody attack followed Petraeus's secret order by only 18 days is likely to heighten Iranian suspicions even more.
A Captured Leader
Iranian authorities captured Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi in February and publicized his claims that the United States had promised his group military help in its insurgency against Iran's Islamic Republic.
Rigi described contacts in March 2009, claiming that U.S. representatives "said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment, arms and machine guns. They also promised to give us a base along the border with Afghanistan next to Iran."
Rigi asserted that the U.S. representatives said a direct U.S. attack on Iran would be too costly and that the CIA instead favored supporting militant groups that could destabilize Iran.
"The Americans said Iran was going its own way and they said our problem at the present is Iran" not al-Qaeda and not the Taliban, but the main problem is Iran," Rigi said, according to Iran's Press TV.
"One of the CIA officers said that it was too difficult for us [the United States] to attack Iran militarily, but we plan to give aid and support to all anti-Iran groups that have the capability to wage war and create difficulty for the Iranian (Islamic) system," Rigi said.
Rigi added that the Americans said they were willing to provide support "at an extensive level." However, in the Press TV's account, Rigi did not describe any specific past U.S. support for his organization.
In a July 7, 2008, article for The New Yorker, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh quoted Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer who worked in South Asia and the Middle East for nearly two decades, as saying that Jundallah was one of the militant groups in Iran benefiting from U.S. support.
Hersh also reported that President George W. Bush signed an intelligence finding in late 2007 that allocated up to $400 million for covert operations intended to destabilize Iran's government, in part, by supporting militant organizations.
Hersh identified another militant group with "long-standing ties" to the CIA and the U.S. Special Operations communities as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK, which has been put on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.
But Jundallah has been spared that designation, a possible indication that the U.S. government views it as a valuable asset in the face-off against Iran, or in the parlance of the "war on terror," as one of the "good guys."
Gen. Mizra Aslam, Pakistan's former Army chief, also has charged that the U.S. has been supporting Jundallah with training and other assistance. But the U.S. government denies that it has aided Rigi or his group.
Whatever the truth about the alleged U.S. backing for Jundallah, its Oct. 18, 2009, attack on the Revolutionary Guards does appear to have disrupted Iran's readiness to move forward on the uranium swap deal. Iran sent a lower-level Iranian technical delegation to Vienna for the Oct. 19 meeting while Iran's leading nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili stayed away.
Ahmadinejad's government also began expressing doubts about American and Western trustworthiness. The Iranians proposed some alternative ideas regarding where the uranium might be swapped, but Obama stung by harsh criticism over his diplomatic outreach to Iran began retreating from his peace plans, talking tougher against Iran and suggesting no further concessions.
Yet, according to the letter released in Brazil, it appears Obama continued to harbor hopes that the swap could be salvaged.
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