Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tells his Pakistani counterpart that Iranian attacks earlier this week on terrorists based in Pakistan’s territory were meant to remove security threats to both nations, reiterating Iran’s respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its eastern neighbor.
In a phone call with Jalil Abbas Jilani on Wednesday, Amir-Abdollahian said that the so-called Jaish al-Adl terrorist group that was targeted in Iranian missile and drone attacks a day earlier has been working against the security of both Iran and Pakistan for the past years.
He reiterated the fact that no Pakistani national had been affected by the attacks which he said had solely targeted terrorists of Iranian origin operating against the Islamic Republic’s security from the Pakistani territory.
“Iran’s security has repeatedly been threatened by this Iranian terrorist grouplet from the Pakistani soil and the grouplet has repeatedly claimed responsibility for terrorist moves on the Iranian soil,” said the top Iranian diplomat.
He expressed hope that military and security officials of Iran and Pakistan would continue to exchange ideas to boost their security cooperation.
For his part, Jilani said in the phone call that Pakistan has always took measure against any threat targeting the security of the Islamic Republic of Iran from its soil.
He said that Pakistan expects that operations against terrorist groups in the country are solely carried out by Pakistani forces.
The minister further called on the Iranian side to share intelligence about terrorist groups operating in Pakistan with Islamabad as part of joint cooperation between the two countries.
Iranian media said on Tuesday that bases controlled by Jaish al-Adl in Pakistan’s Balochistan province had been hit and destroyed by missiles and drones fired by the Iranian Armed Forces.
That came a day after Iran’s elite military force the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) launched missile attacks on targets controlled by terrorists and the Israeli spies in Syria and in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.