ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS DEADLY KERMAN BLASTS
Tehran vows revenge after explosions kill nearly 100 people and wound scores at memorial for commander Qassem Soleimani in southeastern city
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for two explosions in Iran that killed nearly 100 people and wounded scores at a memorial for top commander Qassem Soleimani.
In a statement posted on its affiliate Telegram channels, the militant Sunni Muslim group said two Isis members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd that had gathered at the cemetery in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman on Wednesday.
The memorial was marking the fourth anniversary of the death of Soleimani, who was assassinated in Iraq in 2020 by an American drone.
In Washington, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters the United States was in no position to doubt Islamic State’s claim that it was responsible for Wednesday’s attack.
Tehran has vowed revenge for the bloodiest such attack since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The twin blasts also wounded 284 people, including children.
“A very strong retaliation will be meted out to them by the hands of the soldiers of Soleimani,” Iran’s First Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber told reporters in Kerman.
Iranian authorities called for mass protests yesterday, when the funerals of the victims of the twin blasts were to be held.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps described the attacks as a cowardly act “aimed at creating insecurity and seeking revenge against the nation’s deep love and devotion to the Islamic Republic”.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has condemned what he called Wednesday’s “heinous and inhumane crime”. Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, vowed revenge for the bombings.
The United Nations Security Council in a statement condemned what it called a “cowardly terrorist attack” and sent its condolences to the victims’ families and the Iranian government.
More details about the attackers and their motives could not be immediately established.
But Aaron Zelin, an expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, said he would not be surprised if the attack was mounted by the Islamic State branch based in neighbouring Afghanistan, known as Isis-Khorasan, or Isis-K.
Tehran, he said, had alleged that Isis-K had been behind many foiled plots in the past five years. Most of those arrested were Iranians, Central Asians, or Afghans from the Afghanistanbased affiliate’s network rather than from the group’s Iraq and Syria network.
Isis, he said, harboured a virulent hatred for Shiites – Iran’s dominant sect and often the target of attacks by the group in Afghanistan – who it viewed as apostates. Zelin said Isis had been issuing threats against Tehran for years.
A Taliban crackdown has weakened Isis-K inside Afghanistan, forcing some members to move to neighbouring states, but the group has continued plotting operations outside the country, according to US officials.
“Isis-Khorasan’s increased external focus is probably the most concerning development,” said a US National
Counterterrorism Centre report published in August in CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point.
In 2022, Islamic State claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a Shiite shrine in Iran that killed 15 people, while previous attacks claimed by Islamic State include twin bombings in 2017 that targeted Iran’s parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The attack coincides with a three-month outbreak of fresh hostilities between Israel and Gaza, and Iranian state television previously showed crowds gathered at cities across Iran, including Kerman, chanting: “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”.
The US denied any involvement in the explosions and said it also had no reason to believe Israel was involved. It said the blasts appeared to represent “a terrorist attack” of the type carried out in the past by Islamic State.
Tehran often accuses its arch enemies, Israel and the US, of backing anti-Iran militant groups that have carried out attacks in the past. Balochi militants and ethnic Arab separatists have also staged attacks in Iran.
The US assassination of Soleimani in a January 3, 2020, drone attack at Baghdad airport, and Tehran’s retaliation – by attacking two Iraqi military bases that house American troops – brought the US and Iran close to full-blown conflict.
As chief commander of the elite Quds force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Soleimani ran clandestine operations abroad and was a key figure in Iran’s long-standing campaign to drive US forces out of the Middle East.