Extremists claim deadly assault on parliament
Assailants with assault rifles, explosives, suicide vests and women’s disguises stunned Iran on Wednesday with audacious attacks on the parliament building and tomb of its revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the 1979 revolution.
At least 12 people were killed and 42 wounded in the pair of assaults in Tehran, which lasted for hours and clearly took Iran’s elite security forces by surprise. The six known attackers also were killed, official media said, and five suspects were reported detained.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps blamed Saudi Arabia and the United States for the assaults even as responsibility for them was asserted by the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group.
If the Islamic State’s claim is true, that would be its first successful attack in Iran, which is predominantly Shiite Muslim and regarded by Sunni militants as a nation of heretics. Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria are helping battle the Islamic State.
Tensions in the Middle East were already high following a visit by President Donald Trump last month to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival. Saudi Arabia led a regional effort on Monday to isolate Qatar, which maintains good relations with Iran.
In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards Corps said: “The public opinion of the world, especially Iran, recognizes this terrorist attack — which took place a week after a joint meeting of the U.S. president and the head of one of the region’s backward governments, which constantly supports fundamentalist terrorists — as very significant,” a reference to Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy.
“The United States condemns the terrorist attacks in Tehran today,” the State Department said. “We express our condolences to the victims and their families, and send our thoughts and prayers to the people of Iran.”
Hours after that, Trump, whose administration has called Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, said in a statement that the United States grieves for the innocent victims. But the president added: “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”
The U.S. distrust of Iran was evident Wednesday when Republicans and Democrats in Congress acted in a 92-7 procedural vote to move forward on a new set of sanctions on Iran. The bill would impose mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the country’s Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.
The attacks, the first in Tehran in more than a decade, came just over two weeks after Trump, with Saudi Arabia and its allies, vowed to isolate Iran. Iran has dismissed those remarks, made at a summit meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, as a scheme by Trump to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Iran has long accused Saudi Arabia of backing terrorists in the region, saying that the kingdom had facilitated the rise of Sunni extremist groups such as the Islamic State and others in Iraq and Syria.
Trump, meanwhile, who tweeted Tuesday about Qatar funding extremists, offered to host Mideast leaders at the White House to resolve the crisis stemming from the shunning of Qatar.