Days after three of their fighters killed seven in London, the Islamic State mounted a surge in Iran on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people and wounding nearly 50 in coordinated attacks on the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
According to the New York Times, some of the ISIS fighters were “dressed as women,” and deployed AK-47 automatic rifles, hand grenades and explosive vests, yelling “Allahu akbar” as they fired on the streets of Tehran. At the parliament building, one terrorist “blew himself up on the fourth floor as others fired from the windows.” It took four hours before Iran’s security forces killed four of the attackers. In all, six terrorists were reported killed.
In the attack on the Khomeini mausoleum, the Times of India reported, “a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the shrine, while another woman was arrested carrying six grenades.” The Islamic State terrorists killed a gardener and wounded several others at the vast compound in the south part of the city.
According to a CNN report this was a “symbolically significant” target because “the tomb houses the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder and first supreme leader, and it is a popular destination for tourists and pilgrims. He led the revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979 and was supreme leader for 10 years.” CNN also noted that “gun ownership is heavily controlled in Iran, raising speculation that the attackers smuggled weapons into the country.”
Through its Amaq media division, ISIS claimed “fighters with the Islamic State” had perpetrated the attack. Iranian officials were quick to blame Saudi Arabia, whose leaders recently met with U.S. president Donald Trump. According to a statement from the Fars news agency, Iran “sees the fact that this terrorist act was perpetrated soon after the meeting of the US president with the heads of one of the reactionary regional states that has always supported.”
A statement from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Reuters reported, said “This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack.”
In a written statement, President Trump said, “We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times.” Trump added: “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.” Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Matthis called Iran “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
While readily assigning blame, Iranian officials made light of the attack. Iran’s government controlled television quoted supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that “these fireworks have no effect on Iran. They will soon be eliminated.” Iran’s foreign minister tweeted: “Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to bring the fight to our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters despise most: the seat of democracy.”
Parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani dismissed the attacks as a “trivial matter,” but with 13 dead and scores wounded that would seem to be a stretch. As several reports noted, Iran’s vaunted security forces were completely unprepared. A small group of terrorists was able to enter the country, hold out for hours, and inflict heavy casualties. By all indications, panic and mayhem prevailed in the streets of Tehran.
By some accounts, Wednesday’s Tehran assault was the Islamic State’s first successful attack in Iran. The New York Times called the strike “the worst terrorist strike to hit the Islamic republic in years,” noting previous attacks by the M.E.K. the Mujahedeen Khalq, formerly supported by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Iran and Iraq fought a war from 1980 to 1988, and in 1979 Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini invaded the U.S embassy in Tehran, took more than 60 hostages and held them for 444 days. President Jimmy Carter mounted a rescue operation that failed miserably. Iran released the hostages on the first day of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Meanwhile, news report on the Tehran attack betrayed familiar reluctance to identify radical Islamic terrorists. The Times of India reported “gun attacks” and “suicide bombs.” The Al Jazeera headline read simply “Gunmen attack Iran’s parliament, Khomeini shrine.” Reuters, on the other hand, proclaimed, “Islamist militants strike heart of Tehran, Iran blames Saudis.”
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