Iran points finger at Gulf state, Arab separatists for deadly attack
Tehran, Iran - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday pointed blame at Arab separatists for a deadly attack on a military parade and accused an unnamed US-backed Gulf state of supporting them.
Tehran also summoned diplomats from Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain for allegedly hosting members of the group suspected of links to Saturday’s attack near the Iraqi border that left at least 29 people dead.
Four militants attacked a parade commemorating the start of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, capital of the border province of Khuzestan.
Officials and an eyewitness said the gunmen were clad in Iranian military uniforms and had sprayed the crowd with gunfire using weapons they had stashed in a nearby park.
The Islamic State (IS) extremist group claimed responsibility for the rare assault.
But from early on, Iranian officials saw an Arab separatist movement, the Ahwazi Democratic Popular Front (ADPF) or Al-Ahwazi, as the main suspect.
“It is absolutely clear to us who has done this, which group it is and to whom they are affiliated,” Rouhani said on state television on Sunday, shortly before leaving Tehran for the UN General Assembly in New York.
“Those who have caused this catastrophe ... were Saddam’s mercenaries as long as he was alive and then changed masters,” he said, referring to late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“One of the countries in the south of the Persian Gulf took care of their financial, weaponry and political needs.”
“All these little mercenary countries we see in this region are backed by America. It is the Americans who incite them,” he said.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the attack had been carried out by ‘terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime’.
London-based opposition channel Iran International TV on Saturday aired an interview with Yaqoub Hor Altostari, presented as a spokesman for ADPF, indi- rectly claiming responsibility for the attack and calling it ‘resistance against legitimate targets’.
But in a statement on its website, the group denied any involvement, accusing Iranian authorities of ordering the attack to distract from Tehran’s support for ‘militias in the region’.
Iran in response summoned diplomats from Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain to complain about them ‘hosting some members of the terrorist group’ and ‘double standards in fighting terrorism’, the Foreign Ministry said.
The British charge d’affaires ‘was told that it is not acceptable that the spokesman for the mercenary Al-Ahwazi group be allowed to claim responsibility for this terrorist act through a London-based TV network’, said the ministry’s spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi.
The British Foreign Ministry said its charge d’affaires had extended its condolences to Tehran and that Iranian officials were planning to lodge a formal complaint with Britain’s media watchdog Ofcom.
Ghasemi also said Iran expected the Danish and Dutch governments to ‘hand over the perpetrators of this attack and anyone related to them to Iran for a fair trial’. He also said Iran had warned the United Arab Emirates over ‘offensive remarks’ attributed to a UAE ‘political advisor’ following the attack.