#tehran attacks

By Thomas Erdbrink, NY Times, June 13, 2017

TEHRAN--Turning up the heat in an already tense standoff, several Iranian officials on Tuesday renewed accusations against Saudi Arabia, suggesting that the Persian Gulf kingdom was behind last week’s twin terrorist attacks in Tehran.

Iran’s most influential military figure, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, told the semiofficial Fars news agency that Iran had “precise information” that Saudi Arabia “has asked terrorists to carry out operations in Iran.”

The deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeria, a hard-liner, made similar assertions against Saudi Arabia, accusing the Saudis of “governmental terrorism.”

Other officials have echoed those remarks.

In the episode last Wednesday, the Parliament building and the shrine of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were attacked simultaneously. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assaults, which killed 17 people and wounded dozens. All but one of the attackers were Iranian Kurds.

Many Iranians pointed immediately at Saudi Arabia as the mastermind, quoting a remark in May by the Saudi deputy crown prince and defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman. In a television interview, he said the kingdom would bring war to Iran. “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia,” Prince Mohammed said, without elaborating. “Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”

On the day of the attacks, though, Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, rejected any blame. “We condemn terrorist attacks anywhere they occur, and we condemn the killing of the innocent anywhere it occurs,” Mr. Jubeir said at a news conference in Germany.

Moderate Iranian officials have also pointed fingers at Saudi Arabia. At a forum in Oslo on Tuesday, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, announced that Iran had “obtained intelligence showing that Saudi Arabia is actively propping up terrorist groups along Iranian eastern and western borders,” according to a report on Iran’s Press TV channel. He also provided no details.

For years, there have been deadly clashes between Iranian security forces and armed Sunni opposition groups in Iran’s Kurdish region in the west and the Baluchi area in the east. Some of these groups have increasingly emphasized their religious backgrounds, rather than a desire for independence, in justifying their armed struggle. Iran, a predominately Shiite nation, has long accused Saudi Arabia, a Sunni nation, and the United States of sponsoring and even training some of these groups.

Iran: Mastermind behind Tehran attacks killed

Iran’s intelligence minister says the mastermind behind Tehran attacks was killed today.

:: Iran’s intelligence minister said the mastermind behind Wednesday’s attacks in Tehran, which killed 17 people, had himself been killed on Saturday by security forces.

“The mastermind and main commander of terrorist attacks on the parliament and Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini was killed today by the…

By Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, June 8, 2017

Gunmen linked to the Islamic State launched a brazen assault in Tehran on Wednesday, attacking the country’s parliament building and the shrine dedicated to revolutionary Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At least 12 people were killed and dozens more wounded.

It was the first time in more than a decade that Tehran was struck by militants. Thomas Erdbrink, the New York Times’s correspondent in Tehran, reported the details: “The attacks started around 10:30 a.m., when men armed with assault rifles and suicide vests--some of them dressed as women--descended on the Parliament building, killing at least one guard and wounding and kidnapping other people. That standoff lasted until midafternoon.”

Six assailants were killed. The Islamic State claimed responsibility through its online channels and released a graphic 24-minute video showing a bloody scene from Iran’s parliament.

The implications of the attack “are huge,” said Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College in London, to my colleagues. For Sunni extremists, “attacking Iran is kind of like attacking the U.S. or Israel.”

Iran sits at the vanguard of Shiite Islam. It is an ideological nemesis of jihadist groups like the Islamic State and features prominently as a target in the propaganda of some Sunni fundamentalists. Iranian proxy militias in Iraq and Syria, to varying extents, have been locked in battles with the Islamic State and other extremist outfits.

In the wake of the assault on Tehran, condemnations and condolences rained in from around the world. The European Union’s top foreign envoy, Federica Mogherini, expressed her sympathies for the victims and said it is “obviously a very sad day again for us anytime there is a terror attack anywhere in the world.” French President Emmanuel Macron called his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, and apparently discussed expanding “cooperation in the fight against terrorism,” according to an Iranian official. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned “these crimes” and pledged Russia’s “readiness for further joint actions” with Iran.

And then there was President Trump.

The White House has made a particular habit of commenting swiftly on Islamic State-related attacks elsewhere, be they in Paris, London, Manchester or even a phantom episode in the Philippines. But for many hours Wednesday, Trump was conspicuously quiet. The State Department’s spokeswoman issued a pro forma condemnation, asserting that “the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world.”

When Trump ultimately broke his silence, though, his message snuffed out whatever goodwill American diplomats may have wanted to convey.

“We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times,” began the statement, before concluding with a startling swipe at Tehran. “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”

It’s tacky and heartless in any context to try to score political points when lamenting the loss of innocent lives. But even given the pronounced tensions between Tehran and Washington--made all the more acute by the Trump administration putting Iran “on notice”--Trump’s statement seemed to cross an unspoken line in world affairs. Iranian officials, after all, issue their own routine condemnations of terror attacks in the United States, such as last year’s massacre at a nightclub in Orlando, without suggesting that the Great Satan was getting its comeuppance. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Iranians held candlelight vigils.

As we’ve written in this space before, the Trump administration’s hostility to Iran is part of its wholesale embrace of the agenda and rhetoric of Iran’s major rivals in the region--Saudi Arabia and Israel. The leaders of both those countries see Iran as an existential threat, a destabilizing actor that backs dangerous groups across the region. There is plenty of truth in this view, given the extent to which Iran’s powerful and hard-line Revolutionary Guard Corps dominates the country’s foreign policy and supports militancy elsewhere.

But Iran was hit by a terrorist group whose ideology is far closer to the creed preached by Saudi clerics than the theologians of Qom, a phenomenon conveniently ignored by the White House and its partners. To be sure, previous administrations have for decades acquiesced or turned a blind eye to the destabilizing effect that Saudi-backed fundamentalism has had on the Muslim world. Yet a Trump administration that is overtly opposed to “radical Islam” has chosen to embolden the Saudis like never before.

Just hours after the attack, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to push forward a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran. A few Democratic senators urged a postponement of the proceedings, given the timing. But they were overruled.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards pointed the finger at Washington and Riyadh, the usual suspects in its eyes. “The public opinion of the world, especially Iran, recognizes this terrorist attack--which took place a week after a joint meeting of the U.S. president and the head of one of the region’s backward governments, which constantly supports fundamentalist terrorists--as very significant,” it said in a statement, referring to Saudi Arabia.

Given the already-intensifying standoff between feuding Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf, it seems the region’s many fault lines are only deepening in the early months of the Trump presidency.

The National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based organization that seeks rapprochement between Iran and the United States, issued an angry response to the White House statement.

By Paul Schemm and Brian Murphy, Washington Post, June 7, 2017

Gunmen stormed two major sites in Iran’s capital Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in gunfire and suicide blasts in parliament and at the revered tomb of the nation’s Islamic revolution leader. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Tehran attacks, which would mark the group’s first major strikes in Iran.

State-run broadcaster IRIB reported the twin attacks killed at least 12 people were killed in an hours-long standoff that ended with all four attackers being killed by security forces.

Earlier, state news agency IRNA said the dead included at least two security guards and that about 30 people were wounded.

The Islamic State group’s media arm Amaq claimed the militant group carried out the twin attacks. The Islamic State, however, is often quick to take ownership of spectacular assaults without providing any evidence.

Iran is predominantly Shiite Muslim and is at odds with Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which view Shiites as a deviant brand of Islam and have carried out attacks against Shiite targets and Iranian religious pilgrims in Iraq and elsewhere across the region

Despite the years of tensions between Iran and the Islamic State, the purported terrorist blow in Tehran would signify a serious escalation by the militants in the region after claiming a wave of attacks in Europe.

For Iran, it also sharply raises the stakes because of the importance of both sites.

Iran views its parliament, or majlis, as a symbol of participatory government in contrast to its main regional rivals, including Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies. The expansive complex around the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is both a spiritual and political testament to the 1979 Islamic revolution.