Iranian Kurds are implicated in Tehran attacks

Authorities arrest 41 people as evidence mounts that terrorists were homegrown

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian authorities arrested 41 people Friday in connection with the twin terror attacks this week, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported, as evidence mounted that Iranian Kurds affiliated with the Islamic State extremist group had carried out the assault.

The men who made their way through the Parliament building Wednesday, shooting assault rifles, throwing grenades and searching for a way into the main hall, were probably Iranian Kurds, security sources say, though only one — an Iranian Kurd — has been identified. The two people who attacked a shrine are understood to be an IranianKurd and a man whose background is unknown, the security sources said.

The man identified by the Ministry of Intelligence, Serias Sadeghi, is a Kurdish Iranian from the city of Paveh in western Iran near the Iraqi border. In 2014, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan Iran, an opposition party, published a report about increasing Islamic State activities in Iranian Kurdistan that singled out Sadeghi as a prominent recruiter who, at times, held sessions in a local mosque.

One website, KhabarDena.Ir, on Friday quoted a community leader from Paveh, Mamusta Molla Ghader Ghaderi, as saying that some of the attackers were from Paveh. A video posted on the Islamic State media channel Amaq News on Thursday shows a group of five men, with their leader, possibly Sadeghi, dressed in black with his face covered by a mask, speaking in both Arabic and Kurdish, claiming responsibility for the attacks.

Publicly, the Iranian leadership has sought to cast blame for the attacks on its favorite targets: Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel.

While evidence that this week’s attacks were carried out by Iranian Kurds is becoming irrefutable, Iranian authorities are typically reluctant to admit to having homegrown terrorists or to reveal their ethnic backgrounds. Both would indicate a degree of instability and tensions that the Iranian leadership would rather not acknowledge. The fact that the attackers are in all likelihood Iranian Kurds, Sunnis from inside the country, is a source of concern, one analyst said.

“The border towns and villages and tribes along Iran’s East, West and Southern borders are poor and vulnerable to extremism,” said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, an Arabic affairs analyst. “Young unemployed men can be wooed and recruited.”

On Friday, two days after the attacks at the city’s landmark Parliament building and the golden, domed mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, heavily armed police officers and soldiers were everywhere.