WASHINGTON — The State Department on Wednesday formally designated an Iranian anti-government group as a foreign terrorist organization, which some analysts took as a gesture of U.S. goodwill toward the Iranian government.
The group, Jundullah, is a Sunni organization that has killed dozens of Iranian civilians and military personnel to defend the Baloch minority in Iran’s remote southeastern corner. The Iranian government has accused the U.S. of supporting the group to destabilize the regime and has demanded that Washington regard Jundullah as a terrorist organization.
The State Department said in a statement that since 2003 the group has used suicide bombings, ambushes, kidnapping and assassinations “resulting in the death and maiming of scores of Iranian civilians and government officials.”
In May 2009, the group attacked a crowded Shiite mosque in Zahedan, destroying the mosque and killing and wounding “numerous” worshipers, the State Department said. The group also has killed members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military arm at the center of power in Iran.
The U.S. designation “could be intended by the (Iranian) government as a goodwill gesture,” said Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist at the Rand Corp. in Virginia.
Western powers are hoping to resume negotiations with Iran this month over its disputed nuclear program.
But Philip Crowley, the chief State Department spokesman, said the move was “not made to curry favor with the Iranian government. . . . This group is engaged in terrorism, and it’s trying to destabilize a sensitive region of the world.”
U.S. officials in Afghanistan have long pushed for the administration to blacklist the group as a terrorist organization, hoping the move would help persuade Tehran to halt its support of the Taliban. But some analysts are skeptical that will be Iran’s response.
Jundullah’s goals are sectarian rather than jihadist, Nader noted.
