Well, I have my doubts, but there are several tasty ironies and ominous portents given life in my fevered brain by tha certain report from this morning.
As most here know, on Wednesday, a car bomb was detonated in Zahedan, an eastern Iranian city of about a half-million in the Sistan-Baluchestan province near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. The explosion took out a bus of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, killing 11 and wounding another 30 or so. A "shadowy Sunni militant group", the Waziristan-based Jundallah (Army of God), reportedly claimed responsibility for the Wednesday attack and another, non-fatal detonation in Zahedan on Friday. Jundallah, which apparently emerged only in 2003 as a supposed ethnic Baloch insurgency, is also accused of plotting to assassinate "Sunni and tribal leaders to sow discord and foment conflicts between the Shiite and Sunni citizens in Sistan-Baluchestan province."
But that's not the good part. See below.
According to this report today in ChinaView (pass the salt, please),
Explosive devices and arsenals used in a terrorist attack in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Wednesday came from the United States, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday.
Relevant documents, photographs and film footage, which show that the explosives and arsenals used in the attack were American, would soon be made public, an "informed source" was quoted as saying.
The Fars news agency could be making this up. I mean, Fars could be owned by Murdoch. On the other hand, of course it could easily be true that explosives and weapons used by Jundallah came from the US - by way of the US arming the proto-Taliban in their struggle to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan lo those many years ago - and eventually found their way, through numerous intermediaries, into the hands of Waziristan "insurgents."
And it could be true that the Iranian government is planning to make a show of this - as an illustrative counter to US demos of Iranian-made weapons that have shown up in Iraq.
Tee. And, futhermore, Hee.
On the other hand, suppose the "Iranian government officials", in this yet-to-happen demonstration, go so far as to show that the dates on the weapons clearly indicate that they're of recent US manufacture. And suppose further that these Iranian officials claim to have been able to trace them back to US arms sales to Pakistan and, gulp, Saudi Arabia. With this speculation, I suppose, this diary has officially jumped the shark, but, well, whatever.
I leave further speculation to the group since it will certainly be more snarkily delicious than what I might regurgitate.
********
UPDATE: Soj has published an amazingly thorough (and, well, serious) diary on this item and the context. Check it out.