The AfPak crisis between the US and Iran
More than Iran, what Obama fears is Pakistan's Islamic extremist taking control of the country's nuclear arsenal. The AfPak scenario drawn by the US intelligence is more than alarming. If the current trends are not reversed, the US risk to loose both the war in Afghanistan and control of its Muslim neighbour.
Therefore, the White House has shifted the main goal of its military engagement, from crushing the Taliban-Pashtun insurgency, to defeating the Islamist galaxy in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It's in fact from Pakistan, which "invented" the Taliban, that the Afghan chaos stems. This is a direct consequence of the historic rivalry between Pakistan and India, where Islamabad considers Afghanistan as a strategic background in case of an Indian massive attack.
The geographic core of the crisis spans from the Iranian-Afghan-Pakistani frontier to the long disputed Kashmir region. But the biggest threat to the regional stability comes from Punjab and Baluchistan.
In the last two years, the Jihadist pressure has shifted from the Tribal Areas to the very heart of Pakistan – Punjab. A region that houses the Army's headquarters and the main nuclear sites of the country. As a consequence, the cooperation between the army and the Jihadists seems to have come to an end.
The other strategic area is Baluchistan, located between Pakistan and Iran, home to several Jihadist and separatist movements and theatre of massive illegal trafficking. A very instable region, that in the future should be crossed by the planned Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, to be theoretically prolonged to India and, maybe, China.
To Tehran, the attacks on the Iranian side of the border are not just a matter of separatist movements, but an aggression from Pakistan, the US and Israel, that sooner or later could justify appropriate countermeasures.