Jundallah and other things

I think I see what the Blotter is up to here:

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.

They decide now is the perfect time to bring up a story about our efforts to destabilize Iran, which helps to explain why the Iranians might grab Brit hostages (the Brits are easier pickings due to their ROE and are more useful politically as leverage). But, would the US really collaborate with our own enemies to get at the Iranians?

"Jundullah has close ties with Al-Qaeda."

Even more puzzling, super terrorists Ramzi Yousef and his uncle KSM hail from the Baluchostan province of Pakistan and Yousef was even suspected in a terror attack against an Iranian Shiite Mosque before he turned his full attention to the Great Satan. The moonfolk might approach full buzz on this one.

The Blotter story seems somewhat at odds with a similar story in the New York Times from yesterday, which had no mention of our working relationship with terror groups [if the NYT doesn't report such a thing, can it really exist?]. Said the paper of record:

Officials are also divided and somewhat puzzled about Iran’s role in pursuing Qaeda figures.

Intelligence officials say they believe that the Iranian government has in some cases been quite active in the hunt and has put under house arrest a number of top operatives who fled from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, including the Egyptian operations chief Saif al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, one of the Qaeda leader’s sons.

But officials say they believe that several other important Qaeda figures may be operating in Iran, including an Egyptian known as Abu Jihad al-Masri and a Libyan explosives expert named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who is thought to travel between Iran and Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Hmm, maybe this guy can help. But seriously, why would the US be working with a group like Jundallah? Are we? The Blotter used the following source references, "U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News"; "Tribal sources tell ABC News"; "A CIA spokesperson said", and when Dick Cheney was dragged into the picture it used "Pakistani government sources". Finally, when comparing our current actions to Reagan's dabblings with proxy armies to fight the Contras in the 80s they used "some former CIA officers say". Dollars to doughnuts that's codeword for Larry Johnson or VIPS.

As usual we're left with the bedrock of blogging--near blind speculation--to explain or make sense of all this, so here goes. There are seemingly three routes available:

1) An "oil ends justify the means" route, which says that we're attempting to reprise our role in the Iran-Iraq war, which was to pit the Shias against the Sunnis to keep them occupied with killing themselves so neither side wins.

2) The radical rainbow conspiracy highway, which suggests we actually ARE al Qaeda; attacked ourselves on 9/11; and this is just further pwoof,

3) Jundallah is a rag-tag bunch of wannabees and we're using them to infiltrate the tribal regions so we can get some much needed ground truth about the real bad guys. And hey, they're targeting the Iranians.

I'll let you speculate as to my selection.