TEHRAN — Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was currently engaged in an intensified offensive on Sunni insurgents in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province near the Pakistani border, in an area populated by the marginalized Baluch Sunni community, which has faced systematic discrimination since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought to power the Shiite establishment in Tehran.

As reported by IRGC-run news agencies on Monday, the force declared that a recent militant attack in the country's southeast was a "plot by the Israeli intelligence community," amid simmering tensions between the two archenemies. 

IRGC Ground Forces chief Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour said the military organization has killed or arrested some 80% of the militants. The offensive came in response to the Oct. 26 cross-border attack near the town of Taftan that resulted in the deaths of 10 Iranian police officers. The violence was claimed by Jaish al-Adl, an insurgent group designated as a terrorist organization by the Islamic Republic and several other countries, among them the United States. 

Pakpour claimed that Iran has verified the involvement of Israeli agencies in orchestrating the attack to "destabilize" the country. "These incidents are not coincidental," he said, framing the skirmish as part of the broader geopolitical tensions, and highlighting the simultaneity of the militant attack with the Israeli missile salvo on Iranian military sites, which occurred on the same day.