ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran
>
> ABC News - April 03, 2007 5:25 PM
>
> Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report:
>
> > xclus.html>
>
> A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a
> series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been
> secretly encouraged and advised by American officials
> since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources
> tell ABC News.
>
> The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of
> the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan
> province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.
>
> It has taken responsibility for the deaths and
> kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and
> officials.
>
> U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah
> is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the
> group, which would require an official presidential
> order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.
>
> Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah
> is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi,
> through Iranian exiles who have connections with
> European and Gulf states.
>
> Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian
> soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and
> brought back to Pakistan.
>
> The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed
> some of the Iranians.
>
> "He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug
> smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said
> Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at
> the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who
> recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal
> members.
>
> "Regi is essentially commanding a force of several
> hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across
> the border into Iran on Iranian military officers,
> Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them,
> executing them on camera," Debat said.
>
> Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in
> February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian
> Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city
> of Zahedan.
>
> Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it
> said were confessions by those responsible for the bus
> attack.
>
> They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah
> and said they had been trained for the mission at a
> secret location in Pakistan.
>
> The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo
> of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.
>
> A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA
> action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides
> no funding of the Jundullah group.
>
> Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign
> against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice
> President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President
> Pervez Musharraf in February.
>
> A senior U.S. government official said groups such as
> Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda
> figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to
> deal with such groups in that context.
>
> Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is
> reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy
> armies, funded by other countries including Saudi
> Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in
> the 1980s.