Following the raid, the Baloch nationalist leader Sher Mohammad Marri paid a formal visit to Baghdad. Newspapers widely reported that the Soviet arms were intended to be given to Baloch separatists in their fight against Pakistan and Iran to further fuel tensions between the dissident tribes against the two nations. Media outlets throughout Pakistan predicted that the discovery of these weapons would muster greater support for the government from other ethnic groups in the country. Supported by Iranian forces, Pakistan launched a large-scale military operation against Baloch rebels shortly after this incident. This counter-insurgency operation finally ended in 1977 after the insurgency/rebellion was largely crushed and left disheartened. Despite this setback, Iraq continued to undertake covert activities to empower Baloch nationalists and attempt to destabilize Pakistan and Iran. The culmination of tensions between Iran (a key U.S. ally with a developed economy and the fifth-largest military in the world at the time) and Iraq would eventually reach an extreme point after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq War, in which Pakistan would provide the Iranians with covert support and inflict major losses on invading Iraqi forces.