Hardline news outlet says Qatari intelligence sponsoring Salafist terror groups in Iran

Posted: January 21, 2013 | Author: iranmilitarynews Mehdi Jahantighi, journalist and political analyst, accuses Qatari intelligence of funding and supporting Sunni Jihadist terror groups in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, with the aim of destabilizing Iran and its regional influence.

Jahantighi also accuses Qatar and Saudi Arabia of being behind the 2012 assassination of Sunni cleric Molavi Mostafa and of funding Salafist trends in southeastern Iran, along with the US and Israel, arguing that Salafists fear the Iranian model of Sunni Islam  Iranian Sunni community and its role in the “Islamic Awakening”.
In an article published in hardline Mashregh News, which is close to Iran’s security forces, Jahantighi says that a number of terrorist groups, including the Taliban, Pakistan’s Sepah-e Sahaba and Jundallah, as well as new groups like Harakat Ansar Iran (HAI) and Jaish ul-Adl, are operating inside Iran.
According to Jahantighi, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services have sponsored Salafist groups in south-eastern Iran by developing extremist Sunni seminaries, aiming to create divisions between Iran’s Islamic principles and those of the Sunni community in order to destabilize Iran’s southeast region by creating terror groups. A lack of close monitoring in the region has allowed this scenario to arise, he adds, and the number of madrasas promoting Wahhabism in Sistan-Baluchestan has mushroomed.
Jahantighi goes on to argue that during the past two years, Qatar’s intelligence agency has developed a new role for itself in response to the Islamic Awakening [Iran's term for the Arab Spring - an attempt to link events in the Middle East to its own revolution], whose main role is to destabilize countries in the Middle East, particularly Iran, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and to promote the spread of Salafist trends in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – because of Iran’s role in inspiring the “Islamic Awakening” among Sunnis. Qatar and Saudi Arabia were behind the 2012 assassination of Sunni cleric Molavi Mostafa, he argues, because Molavi, who supported the Iranian revolution, posed a threat to Salafists.
Therefore, he argues, the “triangle” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Taliban, aided by Pakistani intelligence agents, are carrying out highly covert operations in Sistan-Baluchestan.
Qatar is working to create terrorist groups in the province, while Saudi Arabia is helping the Green Movement, in order to promote sedition, according to Jahantighi.
Jahantighi accused Qatar of previously supporting Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, and noted that another terror group, HAI, were behind a “failed suicide bombing” outside a Chabahar mosque last year. HAI has claimed responsibility for the attack, including by naming the suicide bomber.
Following that terror attack, in which Iran said that two Basij officers were killed and five more people injured,  Iranian lawmakers also accused Qatar and Jundallah of being behind the bombing.
Jundallah chief Abdulmalek Rigi was hanged in June 2010 after he was captured on board a plane that was forced by Iranian armed forces to land as it crossed the Islamic Republic’s airspace.
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