Terror in Tehran
'ISIS' attacks 2 sites
Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people
Iran blamed Saudi Arabia for the assaults, but ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the carnage and released a video of gunmen inside the parliament building.
One dramatic photo showed a child being handed through a first-floor window to safety as an armed policeman looks on from a second window. ISIS also threatened more attacks against Iran’s Shiite population, which the hard-line Sunni militants considers heretical.
Saudi Arabia denied any involvement, but the assault further inflamed boiling regional tensions between Riyadh and Tehran as they vie for control of the Gulf and influence in the wider Islamic world.
The bloodbath — in which at least 43 others were injured — came days after the Saudis and other Sunni Muslim powers cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing Tehran and funding militant groups. The attacks would be ISIS’s first in Iran, one of the major powers leading the fight against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria.
Iranian police said they had arrested five suspects with links to the attackers, and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, struck a defiant tone.
“These fireworks have no effect on Iran. They will soon be eliminated . . . They are too small to affect the will of the Iranian nation and its officials,” state TV quoted him saying.
President Trump jumped into the dispute over Qatar on Tuesday, tweeting that the Saudis acted because of pressure he exerted on Muslim leaders to target state sponsors of terror during his Mideast trip.
Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Riyadh of being behind the attacks and vowed revenge.
“This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president and the [Saudi] backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that [the Saudis] were involved in the brutal attack,” a Guards statement said.
The deputy head of the Guards, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, vowed vengeance, the Tasnim news agency reported. “We will take revenge on terrorists and their supporters who martyred our people,” Salami said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, speaking in Berlin, said he did not know who was responsible for the attacks.
Attackers dressed as women burst through parliament’s main entrance in central Tehran, Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said. One of them detonated a suicide vest in the parliament, he said. About five hours later, Iranian media said four people who had attacked parliament were dead and the incident was over.
Soon after the assault on parliament, another bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s revered founder, Zolfaghari said. A second attacker was shot dead, he said.