Who are the suspects in the Kerman blasts and what does this mean for Iran?
For the past four years, January 3 has been a tense day in the Middle East. It was on this day, in 2020, that the US took shockingly bold action by assassinating Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general who masterminded the regime’s interventions in the region.
Now, on January 3, 2024, Iran suffered one of the worst terror attacks in its history.
At least 95 people were killed in two blasts in Kerman’s Cemetery of Martyrs, where Suleimani is buried, amid ceremonies marking the anniversary of his death.
The initial messaging from local officials was confusing. The mayor of Kerman said it was an accidental gas explosion but state media and those linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after said it was a terrorist attack.
One local MP said there had been four explosions. Another claimed it was a suicide attack, using explosive belts, “surely with Israel’s involvement”. But that account was quickly overtaken as the two most authoritative state news agencies in Iran, Irna and Tasnim, reported the blasts were caused by remote-controlled bombs in two briefcases.
No senior Iranian official or state news agency pointed fingers immediately.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, a Persian-language representative for Israel somewhat bizarrely claimed that this was an inside job by the Iranian regime.
While Israel has a long track record of operating on Iranian soil, it has usually attacked IRGC figures or nuclear scientists. There is no precedent for it conducting this kind of mass attack on Iranian civilians.
Importantly, Tasnim reported there were no IRGC generals among the casualties or injured, ruling out an assassination scenario.
Iran’s Minister of Interior Ahmad Vaihidi, who for a long time served in the IRGC, promised a “crushing response”.
He made no mention of the suspected forces behind the attack and said investigations were continuing. A similar statement was issued by the head of the judiciary.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday, Reuters reported.
Based on the available evidence so far, and given the target and methods used, ISIS, especially its much-feared regional branch in Afghanistan, known as ISKP, is a indeed a possible culprit. Several
experts on both ISIS and Iran who I spoke to agreed on this.
ISIS has conducted several attacks on Iranian territory before, notably on a holy shrine in Shiraz in 2022 and 2023.
According to former BBC correspondent Mehrdad Farahmand, one of the Kerman bombs targeted a museum that used to be a Zoroastrian fire temple, an ancient Iranian faith notoriously hated by ISIS
as it is a symbol of pre-Islamic Iran. Other domestic or foreign militias could have also carried out the attack, as Suleimani had no shortage of enemies near or far.
Still, regardless of who committed the Kerman attacks, Israel’s continuing war in Gaza, which has led to more than 22,300 Palestinian civilian deaths, is part of the broader regional context. Iran and
Israel have been locked in a shadow war for years as Tehran is the main military sponsor of Hamas, which initiated the latest round of the conflict with its October 7 attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people.
In the past few months, Israel has been in conflict with several IRGC-backed forces outside Palestine: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Syrian government, whose territory is the site of extensive IRGC operations.
With things already unstable before Wednesday’s bombings, the year 2024 is now dawning to an ever more tense situation in the Middle East.
It is incumbent upon leaders in the region to work hard to avoid a broader conflagration – as was done in 2020.