Iran’s interior minister on Monday warned that Iranian forces may enter Pakistani and Afghan territory to release border guards seized by a rebel group.
Abdol Reza Rahmani Fazli’s remarks on state TV come a week after the little-known Jaish al-Adl posted photos on Twitter of five men it claims were border guards it seized near Pakistan.
He said Iran had asked Pakistan to treat the case “strongly and seriously” or allow Iran to secure the remote region “deep on Afghanistan and Pakistan soil”.
“Otherwise we do consider it our own right to intervene and create a new security sphere for our safety,” he said.
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hossein Hassani Sa’di spoke of Tehran’s tough confrontation with the terrorists who have abducted five border guards in the Southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan since early this month, stressing that Tehran will show no compromise in this case.
“We will have no soft stand in this case and our neighbouring country (Pakistan to which the terrorists have transferred the kidnapped soldiers) should account for its lack of action,” Hassani Sa’di told reporters in Tehran on Monday.
Meantime, the general said the five Iranian border guards are still alive, and underlined that “political and military measures are underway to set them free”.
Earlier reports said that they had been transferred to Pakistan which has a long border with Iran in the Southeastern parts of the country.
On Sunday, an Iranian deputy foreign minister stressed Tehran’s firm will to root out terrorist groups alongside Iran-Pakistan border.
On February 9, Iran’s Police Chief Brigadier General Esmayeel Ahmadi Moqaddam voiced concern over the presence of terrorist groups in Pakistan’s territories, and underlined that Iran’s police along with the Foreign Ministry are resolved to do their best to clear the fate of the five Iranian guards abducted at the Iran-Pakistan border.
Ahmadi Moqaddam criticised the performance of the Pakistani government and its border police in the joint border region.
He then asked how it is possible that certain elements ambush the Iranian guards, kidnap them, take them to Pakistan and release some photos of them.
The director-general of West Asia Office of the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday invited the Pakistani envoy and conveyed the Islamic Republic’s “displeasure and official protest” to him over the terrorist attack and the abduction of the border guards.
Iran warns to send forces into Pak territory
