January 22, 2024, New York, NY – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, the foreign terrorism arm of the Islamic Republic, launched airstrikes into Iraq, Syria and Pakistan claiming to hit Israeli spy service Mossad’s outposts. But there were no Israeli outposts in this concocted bid to score a propaganda point in the backdrop of the war in Gaza, and Tehran has been humiliated when Pakistan swiftly responded with airstrikes targeting terror groups sponsored by the IRGC, which, to the regime’s horror, revives the specter of Tehran being punished on its own turf, threatening decades of hard work in creating an image of invincibility.
The IRGC runs Iran’s terror proxies across the region and has good experience managing this evil enterprise, but it erred this time by attacking Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, and a longtime partner of the West. The Iranian propaganda stunt fell flat because of Pakistani retaliation targeting terror camps run by the IRGC deep inside Iran. The Iranian air defense systems did not respond, likely to avoid a full-blown war with a stronger neighbor and because – Iran must have feared – others might join in to settle scores.
Iran is not used to a country it meddles in sending fighter jets to bomb the source of the mischief; the IRGC in this case. More importantly, the Pakistani airstrikes inside Iran fuel a bigger debate on policy options to change malignant Iranian behavior and to contain a terror paramilitary force, the IRGC, which the Iranian supreme leader Khamenei uses to expand his radical Khomeinist brand of extremism that the Islamic Republic promotes since 1979.
The Pakistani method is new for the regime in Tehran: Directly hit the IRGC for its transgression abroad. Experts are waiting to see the ramifications of this approach, but the early signs are interesting: the Iranians did not respond, abandoned their usual arrogant rhetoric for the time being, and have approached Pakistan to restore ties with a series of conciliatory statements, which Pakistan will likely accept in the interest of de-escalation. But hours before the Pakistani counterattack, the Iranian foreign minister made a last-ditch phone call to dissuade the Pakistani government from retaliation by offering fresh engagement. It did not work.
Iran is flexing its muscles. Its Hamas proxy forced Israel and Gaza into war and is now trying to do the same in Yemen. This debacle in Pakistan has backfired on the Iranians but it will not be long before the regime commits another atrocity and puts the world on a knife’s edge. The Iranian regime is testing a more assertive strategy in the Red Sea. It has also launched aerial drills close to the Pakistani border a day after the airstrikes.
Iran and the IRGC are nursing their wounds from the humiliation of the latest airstrikes, the first in Iran in 35 years since the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. And Pakistan is not exactly where Iran was expecting a slap from after it instigated Hamas’ war on Israel on Oct. 7.
Aside from disgracing the IRGC in the eyes of Iranian citizens, the Pakistani strikes had momentarily distracted Iran’s evil machine from pursuing terrorism against Israel and against other countries in the region, like Arabs and Azerbaijan, as Iranian dissidents, and Arab media noted. We hope the world is paid close attention to this important development. This incident could shape the way countries in the region approach Iran.
