the Rise of Discontent.” He plots on a map of Iran the scores of bombings, riots, ambushes, assassinations and kidnappings that have occurred recently in its minority regions. Wood’s piece shows that Iran is surrounded by its own mostly Sunni minority regions, Kurdistan in the Northwest, Azeris in the North, Arabs in the Southwest province of Khuzestan and the Baluchis in the Southeast. As an indicator of discontent with the Iranian Shiite theocracy, all these regions are now producing revolutionary commando brigades that are ambushing Iranian military and government targets.

Over the past few years, Iranian Kurds in the Northwest have launched more attacks, but in the lawless Southeast province of Baluchistan, the attacks are the most lethal and dramatic. In December 2005, a Baluchi group called Jundallah (Godbrigade) attacked Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s motorcade, killing one bodyguard. On Feb. 14, 2007, the same group killed 11 elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces and wounded 31 others in a bus bombing using weapons similar to those the Iranian regime is smuggling into Iraq. Two days later, Jundallah forces waged an all-out gun battle with Iranian security forces right in the Baluchi capital city of Zahedan.

The 23-year-old Abdol Maleck Rigi has now emerged as a revolutionary commander of Jundallah. As testament to his stature as a revolutionary commander, Voice of America aired a live phone interview April 1 with Rigi on its Persian-language service, introducing him as the “leader of the Iranian resistance movement.”

I spoke to Roya Teimouri, an Iranian expatriate living in Southern California who works with Iranian