Baluch insurgency, Pakistan's balancing act and China's transactional ties test Iran's strained security reach

Between March 31 and October 10, the rights group HRANA documented at least 63 armed incidents across Sistan and Baluchestan and neighboring Kerman province. At least 94 people were killed and 33 injured. The attacks have become more elaborate as well as more frequent, with coordinated ambushes, roadside bombs and heavier weapons now part of the pattern.

In December 2025, several Baluch armed organizations merged into the People's Fighters Front. The coalition includes Jaish al-Adl, which both Iran and the United States designate as a terrorist organization. The front has increasingly described its aim as ending the Islamic Republic's rule, not extracting concessions for the Baluch. Whether that message can draw support outside the southeast has not been shown.

The timing matters. Iran's security services are dealing with the fallout of a war with the United States and Israel, and they are also the forces the state depends on to suppress dissent at home. Rahim Bandoui, an Iranian-Baluch rights activist and senior member of the Balochistan People's Party, told Iran International's Eye for Iran podcast that the conflict is not new. He traced it to decades of repression and argued that Tehran has long treated peaceful political activity and armed resistance in the province as one and the same threat. What has changed, he said, is that a government weakened by war gives armed groups an opening they lacked before.

If the attacks keep growing, Tehran will have to commit more personnel and resources to the southeast. Past unrest there was contained through military operations, mass arrests and lethal force. A sustained insurgency adds a cost on top of the war, and every unit held in Sistan and Baluchestan is unavailable against protests or other opposition elsewhere in the country.

The limits are real. There is no evidence the coalition can take and hold territory or threaten the central government's control. Across the border, Baluch armed groups in Pakistan differ considerably from their Iranian counterparts in ideology and aims, so a unified cross-border movement looks unlikely without substantial change on both sides.

The grievances underneath are old. Sistan and Baluchestan, home to a mostly Sunni Baluch population, is among Iran's poorest provinces despite its position on the Pakistani and Afghan borders and its natural resources. Residents describe discrimination, scarce jobs and poor access to schools and clinics. Sabah Baluch, a rights advocate with Iran House, told the podcast that tens of thousands of people in the province have no official identity documents, which shuts them out of basic services and legal rights. For some families, that has meant generations without formal schooling or work. Hardship pushes people into dangerous informal work, above all carrying fuel across the border, where they risk being shot by security forces or burned to death in vehicle fires.

The province has also seen some of the deadliest state violence against dissent. On September 30, 2022, during the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini, security forces killed at least 87 people in Zahedan, the provincial capital, most of them Baluch worshippers, in what became known as Bloody Friday. Baluch prisoners are also executed out of proportion to their numbers. Iran Human Rights recorded them as 20 percent of executions in 2023, 11 percent in 2024 and 9 percent in 2025.

For now, the Islamic Republic keeps the military and security capacity to hold the southeast, and nothing suggests the insurgency can shift the balance of power alone. The larger question is whether a state that has relied on lethal force for decades can contain several challenges at once while war makes new demands on the forces it uses. For Iran's wider opposition, the answer will matter well beyond the southeast.