Gunmen storm Iran’s parliament
Islamic State claims credit for attack that killed at least 12
The Islamic State has stuck at Iran and its allies for years — but always from afar, in places such as Iraq against Tehran-backed militias and in Syria battling government troops aided by Iranian forces.
That appeared to change Wednesday when bloodshed came to Tehran. In a few chaotic hours, Iran endured the kind of deadly rampages so often claimed by the Islamic State elsewhere.
The twin attacks, the first major assaults in Iran claimed by the Islamic State, targeted both the heart of Iran’s political identity and the notion that militants were no match for the security forces zealously guarding Tehran.
The attacks — which left at least 12 dead in the parliament building and outside the tomb of the leader of the nation’s Islamic revolution — also highlighted how the fight against the Islamic State has served to redraw alliances and blurred political agendas, leaving the United States and Iran with a shared enemy.
It is highly unlikely that the Tehran attacks could reset the U.S.-led efforts against the Islamic State or bring Iran more directly into the fight.
But it draws sharp attention to the Trump administration’s embrace of Iran’s main regional rival, Saudi Arabia, as a cornerstone in the battle against Islamist militants and in constraining Iran’s regional influence.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issued a statement condemning the attacks in Tehran, offering “thoughts and prayers to the people of Iran.”
“The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world,” she said.
But Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps took a thinly veiled jab at Saudi Arabia as a source of militant ideology, saying it was “meaningful” that the attacks occurred less than three weeks after President Trump visited Riyadh and asserted strong U.S. support for the Saudis and their allies.
The Revolutionary Guard statement added that the “spilled blood of the innocent will not remain unavenged.”
Iran is predominantly Shiite Muslim and is at odds with Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which view Shiites as heretics and have attacked Shiite targets across the region.
While it is unclear what direct measures Iran could take against the Islamic State, the fallout is certain to deepen regional tensions at a difficult time. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others have pledged to try to heal an unprecedented diplomatic break in which Saudi Arabia and its allies have severed ties with Qatar, a key U.S. military partner in the Persian Gulf.
The Saudis and their allies accuse Qatar of supporting Islamist militants and oppose its outreach to Iran.