Iran Fortifies Ties With Pakistan to Combat Terrorism

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Iran repairing ties with Pakistan amid tensions with the United States, Israel’s evidence against the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, and China’s Evergrande ordered to liquidate.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Iran repairing ties with Pakistan amid tensions with the United States, Israel’s evidence against the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, and China’s Evergrande ordered to liquidate.

Sign up to receive World Brief in your inbox every weekday. Sign up to receive World Brief in your inbox every weekday. Repairing Relations

Tehran agreed to improve security cooperation with Pakistan on Monday after the two nations traded deadly airstrikes at alleged Baluch separatists earlier this month.

On Jan. 16, Iranian forces launched an attack inside Pakistan against Jaish al-Adl, an Islamist Baluch separatist group, in an operation that Tehran said was intended to protect against border threats. At least 11 people, including two children, were killed. Islamabad responded by accusing Iran of violating its territorial sovereignty, recalling its ambassador from Tehran, and targeting alleged Baluch militants inside Iran, killing at least nine people. The exchange, which came as Iran also launched attacks against alleged Islamic State and Israeli targets in Iraq and Syria, caused concern among some regional experts that the war in the Middle East was expanding even further.

But it seems that, at least in this case, cooler heads have prevailed. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with his Pakistani counterpart, Jalil Abbas Jilani, and caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Monday to discuss strengthening military communication to combat terrorism. They also agreed to establish free trade economic zones near their shared border to bolster bilateral trade. “Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity remains the immutable and foundational principle of this cooperation,” Jilani said.

But where Iran mended its relationship with Pakistan, Tehran and its proxy groups continue to take destabilizing actions elsewhere. Authorities in Tehran executed four men allegedly linked to Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, on Monday. The individuals were arrested in mid-2022 for plotting to bomb a local factory affiliated with the nation’s defense ministry. They were deemed “terrorists” and convicted of espionage for Israel in September 2023. However, Iran Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization based in Norway, said the four suspects were Kurdish political prisoners and were tortured until they confessed to working for Israel.

And on Sunday, a drone strike at a U.S. base in Jordan killed three U.S. Army soldiers and injured more than 30 others. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias, claimed responsibility for attacks against U.S. personnel in Syria, including two assaults near Syria’s border with Jordan, but did not say if the U.S. base strike was the group’s doing. Iran denied direct involvement in the drone strike.

This was the 165th time that suspected Iran-backed militants have attacked U.S. forces in the region since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, but the first time that U.S. troops have been killed. U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington “shall respond” to the attack but did not specify how. FP’s Jack Detsch outlined three broad options Biden has to choose from and what the ripple effects could be in the region.

Today’s Most Read The World This Week

Tuesday, Jan. 30: Argentina’s parliament votes on President Javier Milei’s omnibus economic bill.

Tuesday, Jan. 30, to Wednesday, Jan. 31: The United States and China hold a working group in Beijing on fentanyl trafficking.

French President Emmanuel Macron visits Sweden.

Wednesday, Jan. 31: The United Nations Security Council convenes to discuss last week’s International Court of Justice ruling on Israel.

Myanmar’s junta-imposed state of emergency is set to expire.

Brazil’s central bank determines its interest rate.

Friday, Feb. 2, to Saturday, Feb. 3: European Union foreign ministers meet in Brussels.

Sunday, Feb. 4: El Salvador holds national elections.

What We’re Following

UNRWA under investigation. Leaked Israeli intelligence assessments shared with U.S. officials last week and reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday provide more details about Israeli allegations that at least 12 staff members with the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) were connected to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including six people who allegedly took part in the assault.

Among other allegations, the intelligence—which includes information gathered from “very sensitive signals intelligence, cellphone tracking data, interrogations of captured Hamas fighters, and documents recovered from dead militants,” among other sources—identifies an UNRWA employee whom Israel alleges participated in the Hamas attack on Be’eri kibbutz, where 96 people were killed, another who was involved in taking the body of a dead Israeli soldier into the Gaza Strip, and one who was close enough to a female hostage in Gaza that he took a photo of her.

The UNRWA is a humanitarian aid organization overseen by the United Nations, with around 13,000 employees in Gaza alone. The agency also provides medical services, runs schools, and oversees refugee camps. In the wake of the allegations, at least nine countries have temporarily suspended funding for the agency, including the United States, which could severely hamper humanitarian aid deliveries to the region. Washington is the UNRWA’s largest donor. The UNRWA has launched an internal investigation and fired the 12 staff members.

Evergrande shutters. A Hong Kong judge ordered China Evergrande to liquidate on Monday. The real estate developer has struggled to function for two years, with more than $300 billion in debt and a host economy spiraling under a property crisis. “Given all of these impending solvency issues, Evergrande’s creditors will likely face a near wipe-out,” Brock Silvers, the chief investment officer for Hong Kong-based Kaiyuan Capital, told CNN. “All of which contributes to the current crisis of confidence in China’s capital markets.”

China’s property sector accounts for roughly 30 percent of the country’s GDP. But falling prices and growing corruption have tainted trust in the vital industry. “As the sector crumbles, the government needs scapegoats,” FP’s James Palmer predicted in China Brief last September. That may begin with purges under President Xi Jinping and trickle down to backstabbing among local officials.

Leaving ECOWAS. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso jointly announced on Sunday that they plan to leave the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The three countries’ ruling military juntas, all of which secured power via coups in the past few years, blamed “inhumane” sanctions for their decision. No formal request to leave the bloc has been submitted yet, ECOWAS officials said. The bloc continues to suspend Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso’s financial transactions.

The West African countries accused ECOWAS of being “under the influence of foreign powers” and “betraying its founding principles.” France, the United Kingdom, and the United States are seen by many West Africans as dictating the bloc’s decisions. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have all cut diplomatic ties with Paris, their former colonial power.

Odds and Ends

Food security activists took their message to the Mona Lisa at Paris’s Louvre Museum on Sunday, when two women splashed the iconic painting with canned soup. One of the participants accused the French food industry of profiting at the expense of high inflation and a worsening hunger crisis. But nothing could taint Mona Lisa’s smile, which remained protected behind a layer of bullet-proof glass.