For Al Jazeera English: Istanbul, Turkey – Nearly a month since he says a team of Iranian intelligence agents tried to drug him and take him back to Iran, Mehrdad Abdarbashi said he was thankful to Turkish authorities for saving his life but worried he is still not safe. “I don’t think I am safe in any city in Turkey right now,” he told Al Jazeera. “I think Iranian intelligence will come after me, and this time they won’t try to kidnap me, this time…Continue Reading “Former pilot says Iranian agents tried to kidnap him in Turkey”
For The Daily Beast: TURBAT, Pakistan—Something fell out of the sky near Arif Saleem’s home at 5:20 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2013. He scrambled outside to find a 25-foot-wide crater just beyond the mud wall surrounding his family compound. The strike was one of three, in quick succession, that morning in the village of Kulahu, in Pakistani Baluchistan, 45 miles east of the Iran border. One of the blasts damaged the local mosque. Pages from the Quran fluttered in the air before landing gently on the…Continue Reading “The Dangerous Drug-Funded Secret War Between Iran and Pakistan”
For the Wall Street Journal online: Where Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet, there’s a people that want their own independent homeland and groups claiming to represent them have fought a three-decade’s long insurgency to get it. The two million Baluchis, who are Sunni Muslims living in Sistan-Baluchistan, one of the largest and poorest of Iran’s 31 provinces, say the region belongs to them and they want more autonomy from Tehran. Iran regards the area as a top security priority because of Pakistan’s links to Iranian…Continue Reading “The Battle for Sistan-Baluchistan”