On December 15, 2010, the Iranian jihadist group Jundallah, took credit for twin suicide bombings on a Shiite mosque in Chabahar, Iran, killing 32 people. Until that time, the group, despite ostensibly being based in Iran, had managed to operate a blog with updates about the group as well as claims of attacks.
Following the mosque bombing, the website, junbish.blogspot.com, went offline, and the Iranian government hanged 11 suspected members of the group, after having already hanged the group’s former leader, Abdulmalik Rigi, in June 2010.
The Chabahar attacks took place in the vast desert province of Sistan and Balochistan, which contains the entirety of Iran’s border with Pakistan. For years the province has seen ethnic tension between Shiite Persians and Sunni Baloch, and Jundallah is in part a manifestation of that conflict, as the group imbues its messages with Baloch nationalism.
For instance, each message is addressed to the people of Balochistan, the Chabahar attack was allegedly in revenge for “160 innocent Baloch youths and adults [who] were executed”, and demanded that Iran “give rule over Balochistan to the Baloch people.” The group also compares Tehran’s support for Shiite settlement in Sistan and Balochistan to Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Chabahar Sucide Bombers
Despite the deaths of several of the group's alleged members in the Iranian government's crackdown, only three days after the original site came down, Jundallah established a twin website, to which several Baloch nationalist websites linked. The new site has remained active, and is updated even more frequently than the old one, indicating that Jundallah continues to operate, despite the Iranian government's crackdown on the group.