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Iran Blames Pakistan and West for Deadly Suicide Bombing
Iran vows revenge after blast kills six Revolutionary Guards commanders and 37 others in Sistan-Baluchistan province
Iran today blamed Pakistan as well as the US and Britain for a suicide bombing that killed six of its commanders and 37 others in one of the country's most unstable provinces.
Iranian TV shows General Noor Ali Shooshtari of the Revolutionary Guards, moments before he was killed. (Photograph: AFP/Getty Images) The head of the Revolutionary Guards, Muhammad Ali
Jafari, said Iranian security officials had presented documents
indicating "direct ties" linking a Sunni group to US, British and,
"unfortunately", Pakistani intelligence organisations, according to the
ISNA news agency.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad strongly criticised his Pakistan counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, in a telephone conversation.
"The presence of terrorist elements in Pakistan is not justifiable and the Pakistani government needs to help arrest and punish the criminals as soon as possible," state TV quoted Ahmadinejad as telling Zardari.
Zardari telephoned Ahmadinejad to strongly condemn the suicide attack, a statement from the Pakistani president's office.
The Sunni group, Jundallah (Soldiers of God), claimed responsibility and said it was a response to "the constant crime of the regime in Baluchistan". It named the bomber as Abdol Vahed Mohammadi Saravani.
The attack, which killed the deputy commander of the guard's ground forces, General Noor Ali Shooshtari, and Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh, the provincial commander for Sistan-Baluchistan, inflicted Iran's worst military casualties in years and raised questions of intelligence and security failures in a region long blighted by a violent Sunni insurgency.
Iranian media said the attacker had detonated a bomb belt as Revolutionary Guard commanders arrived for a meeting with tribal elders in a sports hall in Pishin, near Iran's frontier with Pakistan. It was the latest in a series of gatherings meant to foster unity in Sistan-Baluchistan, Iran's poorest province, after a spate of attacks.
Those caught in the explosion had to be taken to hospitals more than 150 miles away because Pishin lacked proper medical facilities. Some are understood to have died en route.
The Revolutionary Guards condemned the bombing as the work of "terrorists" supported by "the great Satan America and its ally Britain", and promised to respond.
"Not in the distant future we will take revenge ... and Baluchis will clear this region from terrorists and criminals," read a statement released to the semi-official Fars news agency.
The statement echoed another call for revenge by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former guard. "The criminals will soon get the response for their anti-human crimes," the official news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.
State television cited an "informed source" as saying that Britain was to blame "by organising, supplying equipment and employing professional terrorists".
A US state department spokesman, Ian Kelly, dismissed allegations of American involvement as "completely false", adding: "We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives."
Over the last five years it has become a standard Iranian position that the US-British alliance is a source of unrest in Sistan-Baluchistan and other provinces. Officials point to the presence of Nato forces in neighbouring Afghanistan as a launchpad for Anglo-American interference.
While Iran has blamed Britain and the US for previous attacks on its territory, the latest allegation came as negotiations were due to resume in Vienna over its nuclear programme, which western governments fear may be designed to build an atomic bomb.
Iranian officials have previously linked Jundallah with al-Qaida, although other sources have suggested the group may have connections with the Pakistani Taliban. In Tehran, the Iranian foreign minister summoned the Pakistani charge d'affaires to complain.
The attack appeared to be a direct challenge to the Revolutionary Guards, who took over direct responsibility for Sistan-Baluchistan's security last April. The guards have taken an increasingly prominent role in Iranian affairs in recent times under the auspices of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Jundallah has taken up arms on behalf of Sistan-Baluchistan's Sunni Baluch population, which it says suffers discrimination at the hands of Iran's Shia rulers. Commanded by Abdolmalek Rigi, the group claims to have killed more than 400 Iranian troops during its insurgency.
It claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 25 people at a Shia mosque in Zahedan, Sistan-Baluchistan's provincial capital, last May. The authorities responded by hanging 13 group members they said had been involved.
Sistan-Baluchistan lies on a major drug transit route from Afghanistan. Nearly 4,000 Iranian security officers are believed to have been killed in clashes with smugglers since 1979.
19 Comments so far
Show AllJust for a minute imagine the outrage, and justifiably so, if Iran pulled off, or had any link to, a terrorist bombing taking place on U.S. soil.
According to Jake Tapper from ABC News:
"...U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.
...Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states."...
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html
The Revolutionary Guard should clean its own house, then maybe fellow Muslims would not feel compelled to blow themselves up in an attempt to attack those perceived as enemies to Islam. This goes beyond the question of whether or not the United States or Britain funds Jundullah. Iran is paying for its system of rulership and for ignoring a huge segment of the Muslim world.
By the way, Cygnus-X1, the United Arab Republic pulled off the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. Where is the outrage for that? Iran, which is supposed to be our enemy and which is ruled by a small group of Muslim high priests, has never threatened the United States. It has shaken its fist at Israel, but then so has almost all of the Muslim world. And Pakistan and the UAR, our supposed allies, have always harbored and supported groups such as Al Queda and other supporters of the Taliban. The United States is meddling in the affairs a very complicated group of Muslim States and we have and will pay the price, just as Iran is doing.
...the United Arab Republic pulled off the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. Where is the outrage for that?
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The outrage was so significant that the public allowed itself to be bamboozled into destroying a country that had nothing to do with the attack.
I'd say that's a great deal of outrage, wouldn't you?
Mr. Markley, where is your evidence that the UAR "pulled off the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon"? Did they also plant the demolition charges in WTC7? Where did they get the thermate?
There is far more admitted evidence that the US is linked to Jundullah than for anything you say.
Also, you say Iran "is supposed to be our enemy"? What makes you think this way? Why should anyone be our "enemy"? Because our government tells us so? Your way of thinking is exactly what is plunging our country into catastrophe, and much of the planet with us.
In July 2008, George W. Bush allocated 400 million dollars for the destabilization of Iran.......The group that was chosen to lead that destabilization was Jundallah, Soldiers of God, which sounds like a templar group to me.......anyway, the former leader of Jundallah was none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the tortured coerced confessor who did not plan the attacks of 9/11.....and, George W. Bush admitted, "He, Sheikh Mohammed, told us that his operatives were ordered to place the explosives low enough to prevent people fropm escaping."....Yes he said explosives........Sheikh Mohammed would have to be able to explain how he got nano-thermite into three buildings........."God is Truth" so said Ghandi.....
Al Qaeda was created by the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.....The Taliban were brought into power by the United States and are supported by Saudi Arabia......Jundallah is now financed by the United States......"My enemy is my friend, my friend is my enemy."
And Sibel Edmonds gave testimony saying that elements of the U.S. government were working with Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda right up to 9/11.
http://noliesradio.org/archives/6340
given that the CIA - who openly funds and arms Shia and Sunni factions in Iraq as well as Pakistan's ISI, meddled in the past Iranian election and just recently announced it was increasing activities in the region - is not subject to congressional oversight, it is indeed safe for US officials to state 'no US involvement'
[it is indeed safe for US officials to state 'no US involvement']
Apparently it has been safe for us officials to state that 'we don't torture', 'Iraq has a nuclear weapons program', etc. why not make the statement that even now has some plausible deniability (even if that deniability only applies on Fox News.).
And so it begins.
Keep in mind that Iran is one of the signatory countries (along with most of the Persian Gulf, China, Japan, France and others) that just agreed to dump the US dollar as the official oil trading currency.
So the timing of this act is not suspicious at all. Not in the least. No chance that there might be ulterior motives at play.
And if you believe that, you also believe that G. W. Bush was elected (twice), the events of 9/11 were committed by Middle Eastern 'terrorists', and the Easter Bunny...
An Islamic terrorist group takes credit, but you blame the US? Talk about tilting at windmills. Get yer heads checked. ZOG ZOG ZOG!
Jundallah, which has ties to Pakistan's notorious ISI, which is in itself, a junior partner to the CIA.
Can't find a tie clearer than that...
The US has been arming various groups in the area since the late '70's and has been actively threatening Iran -- once again.
Even were there no current malicious intentions on the part of the US, the possibility that no connection would exist is pretty small.
Look hard enough and a link can always be found. Six degrees of separation, right? It's called paranoia. It leads to war.
What the heck is ZOG? Some new drinking game?
How about the ABC report in 2007 that Jundallah is supported by U.S. intelligence? "ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran"
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html#
How about this report: "Preparing the Battlefield
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran" by Seymour M. Hersh that appeared in 2008 in the New Yorker?http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
See also today's Democracy Now! discussion: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/19/six_senior_iranian_revolutionary_guard_commanders
Corporate media have an extremely short memory when it comes to reporting inconvenient truths. Questioning the veracity of official U.S. government denials in just not something they like to do. "Never believe anything unless it has been officially denied," the great journalist and documentarian John Pilger once quoted someone (Orwell?) as saying.
However, U.S. support for Jundallah's war of terrorism in Iran is not just just an allegation by the Iranian government, but has been acknowledged by U.S. intel officials as reported by corporate US journalists. Members of the progressive community at least should have a better memory.
Josh
"Power coceded nothing without demand. It never has and never will." Frederick Douglass
A US state department spokesman, Ian Kelly, dismissed allegations of American involvement as "completely false", adding: "We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives."
-----------
As if Ian would have any clue about "American involvement".
Remember when Scott McClellan was shocked, SHOCKED, to find that the White House he was spokesman for, was feeding him lies to pass on to the country ?
Scott painfully relates his cluelessness in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10649.html
To those who would continue to deny possible, but very probable, US involvement in this tragedy, I have two words for you:
Plausible Deniability.
Without a doubt, the U.S. (CIA-Military) working with the Saudis, Pakistani ISI, Mossad and British Intelligence had a hand in this nefarious activity.
And Iran is correct.