12 DEAD AS ISIL STRIKES IN TEHRAN.

Parliament, Khomeini shrine targeted by ISIL

Iran on Wednesday blamed Saudi Arabia for two Islamic State attacks in Tehran, a move that threatened to escalate the terrorists’ actions into a regional confrontation between Sunni and Shia powers.

Gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant killed 12 people when they assaulted the Iranian parliament and a shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini.

In a statement released hours later, the Revolutionary Guard said it held Saudi Arabia responsible for the Sunni jihadist group’s actions and promised revenge.

“This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president and the backward (Saudi) leaders who support terrorists,” it said. “The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack.”

There was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia and Iran did not specify what steps it planned to take in response to the attack.

One team of assailants entered the parliament building in central Tehran, reportedly disguised as women, and opened fire on security guards before taking hostages. The siege came to an end after four hours when one of the attackers detonated a suicide vest.

A second group attacked a highly symbolic shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, a few miles away from parliament.

Marc Martinez, a senior analyst and Iran expert at the Delma Institute in the United Arab Emirates, said the attack on the shrine was an assault on the Islamic revolution itself. As a result, he said, the choice of target may bolster the country’s strong sense of nationalism.

One of the attackers blew himself up and a second was shot dead by security forces.

ISIS’s official Amaq News Agency released a graphic video of the parliament attack while fighting was still going on. The 24-minute video showed two gunmen in an office, firing bullets into a bloodied body on the floor.

“Do you think that we are going to leave? We will remain here, God willing,” one said. ISIS has recently stepped up its propaganda against Iran and in March released a video calling on the country’s Sunni minority to rise up against the Shia regime.

“Sectarian rhetoric is catnip for the Islamic State,” said Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. “It gives credit to their ideological position that Sunni and Shia Islam are fundamentally incompatible.”

The attacks were condemned by Britain and European leaders.

OMID VAHABZADEH / AFP / GETTY IMAGES Iranian policemen evacuate a child from the parliament building in Tehran during an attack Wednesday on the complex. The Islamic State group took responsibility for the attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers, its first in Iran.