A new Iran-Pakistan alliance is emerging as U.S. President Donald Trump has recently increased his pressure on Iran and has taken aim at Pakistan with his new Afghanistan strategy. Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari discussed improving military and defense cooperation between the two countries on Tuesday in Iran’s capital Tehran. Jafari urged Bajwa to establish a military unit similar to the “Basij” forces, a paramilitary volunteer militia in Iran, and expressed Iranian forces’ readiness to cooperate with the Pakistani army. Jafari also stated that this militia consisting of young volunteers would counter those “seeking to destabilize Pakistan’s security.”
IRGC Commander Jafari noted that Iran is ready to offer its experience of 40 years of defense and dealing with hostile threats to neighboring Pakistan. U.S. President Trump announced his new Afghanistan policy on Aug. 14, targeting Pakistan as he broke his promise to end a 16-year conflict between the two countries. Stating that the new strategy includes an alteration of their Pakistan strategies, President Trump threatened Pakistan to change its Afghanistan policies or bear the consequences.
Trump’s pressure on Iran has also increased with recent additional sanctions. The U.S. president announced that he would impose sanctions against the IRGC, and following this, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Oct. 13 designated the IRGC had been labelled under terrorism legislation.
