Iran’s nightmare on its border with Pakistan continues unabated. After a brief lull, violence in the volatile border region is once again on the rise. Tehran is accusing Islamabad of turning a blind eye to cross-border raids by militants, which Islamabad is predictably rebutting. Despite this latest public fallout, neither Iranian nor Pakistani officials appear any closer to conceding that the recurrent violence is a symptom of broader underlying problems. At its core, it's the reality of state-to-state disengagement and regional competition that continues to undermine relations between the two largest countries of southwest Asia.

The latest in many crises

This latest round of hostilities began in the first week of October, after attacks by anti-government militants resulted in the death of four Iranian security personnel. The group that took responsibility — Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) — is an ethnic Baloch and Sunni group that claims to fight for the rights of the people of Baluchistan, Iran’s most impoverished province. Tehran maintains that elements in Pakistan, with support from Arab states in the Persian Gulf, back the group as leverage against Iran.

Jaish al-Adl is the successor to Jundullah, a group that the United States designated as a terrorist organization in November 2010. Jaish al-Adl got its big breakthrough with an audacious operation it carried out in February 2014 when it kidnapped five Iranian border guards. After months of acrimonious negotiations involving Iranian and Pakistani diplomats and tribal leaders from the border regions, four of the guards were released, but the fate of the fifth is still unknown.