Trump administration ‘stands with Iranians’ after attack on military parade

State Department condemns ‘scourge of radical Islamic terrorism,’ after assault in Ahvaz leaves at least 29 dead

Times of Israel

The US strongly condemned an attack on a military parade in Iran that killed at least 29 people Saturday, briefly putting aside its harsh enmity with Tehran.

Despite the Trump administration’s touchy relations with Iran, the State Department said that “the United States condemns all acts of terrorism and the loss of any innocent lives.”

“We stand with the Iranian people against the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism and express our sympathy to them at this terrible time,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Iranian officials had originally blamed the US and Israel for being behind the attack in Ahvaz, though a later consensus emerged that local Arab separatists in the oil-rich southwest Iranian region carried out the assault.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed regional countries and their “US masters” for funding and arming the separatists, issuing a stark warning as regional tensions remain high in the wake of the US withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal.

“Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of Iranian lives,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.

The US condemnation was a rare moment of comity for the two countries, whose leaders have spared verbally and issued threats of war against each other.

The decades-old fissure between Iran and the US has grown in recent months since US President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal. Since then, some administration officials have openly challenged Iran and backed anti-regime protests.

“Iran continues to be the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. We are determined to stop that behavior and to change the way the Iranian regime inflicts horrors all around the world,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News over the weekend.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the attack as exposing “the atrocity and viciousness of the enemies of the Iranian nation.”

“Their crime is a continuation of the conspiracies by the US-backed regimes in the region which have aimed at creating insecurity in our dear country,” Khamenei said in a statement. “However, to their dismay, the Iranian nation will persist on the noble and prideful path they have taken and will — like before — overcome all animosities.”

Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi earlier told the state news agency IRNA, that the gunmen who opened fire at the parade, marking the anniversary of the start of its 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, were “not from Daesh [Islamic State] or other groups fighting [Iran’s] Islamic system … but are linked to America and [Israel’s intelligence agency] Mossad.”

“They have been trained and organized in two Persian Gulf countries,” he said, without elaborating or giving evidence.

Authorities described the assailants as “takfiri gunmen,” a term previously used to describe the Islamic State group. Iran has been deeply involved in the fight against IS in Iraq and has aided embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s long war.

But later, state media and government officials seemed to come to the consensus that Arab separatists in the region were responsible. The separatists accuse Iran’s Persian-dominated government of discriminating against its ethnic Arab minority, though an Ahvazi Arab, Gen. Ali Shamkhani, serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

The attack came as rows of Revolutionary Guardsmen marched down Ahvaz’s Quds, or Jerusalem, Boulevard. It was one of many around the country marking the start of Iran’s long 1980s war with Iraq, commemorations known as the “Sacred Defense Week.”

State television gave a casualty toll of 29 dead and 57 wounded, while the official news agency IRNA said those killed included women and children who were spectators at the rally.

Journalists and onlookers turned to look toward the first shots, then the rows of marchers broke as soldiers and civilians sought cover under sustained gunfire. Iranian soldiers used their bodies at time to shield civilians in the melee, with one Guardsman in full dress uniform and sash carrying away a bloodied boy.

“Oh God! Go, go, go! Lie down! Lie down!” one man screamed as a woman fled with her baby.

In the aftermath, paramedics tended to the wounded as soldiers, some bloodied, helped their comrades to ambulances. Video obtained by The Associated Press of the aftermath showed bodies of soldiers, some appearing lifeless, laying on the ground in pools of blood. One had a blanket covering him. A man screamed in grief.

IRNA said the gunmen wore military uniforms and targeted a riser where military and police commanders were sitting. At least eight of the dead served in the Revolutionary Guard, an elite paramilitary unit that answers only to Iran’s supreme leader, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

“We suddenly realized that some armed people wearing fake military outfits started attacking the comrades from behind (the stage) and then opened fire on women and children,” an unnamed wounded soldier told state TV. “They were just aimlessly shooting around and did not have a specific target.”

State TV hours later reported that all four gunmen had been killed, with three dying during the attack and one later succumbing to his wounds at a hospital.

President Hassan Rouhani ordered Iran’s Intelligence Ministry to immediately investigate the attack.

“The president stressed that the response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the slightest threat would be harsh, but those who support the terrorists should be accountable,” IRNA reported.

Iran has blamed its Mideast archrival, the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for funding Arab separatists’ activity. State media in Saudi Arabia did not immediately acknowledge the attack, though a Saudi-linked, Farsi-language satellite channel based in the United Kingdom immediately carried an interview with an Ahvazi activist claiming Saturday’s attack.

Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to the UK, called the channel’s decision a “heinous act” in a post on Twitter and said his country would file a complaint with British authorities over the broadcast.

Yacoub Hor al-Tostari, a spokesman for the Arab Struggle Movement to Liberate Ahvaz, later told the AP that members of an umbrella group of Ahvazi activists led by his organization carried out the attack.

The attack undermined the Iranian government “on the day it wants to give a message to the world that it is powerful and in control,” al-Tostari said. To bolster his claim, he gave details about one of the attackers that the AP could not immediately verify.

The Islamic State group also claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on its Amaaq news agency, but provided no evidence it carried out the assault. They also initially wrongly said the Ahvaz attack targeted Rouhani, who was in Tehran. The terrorists have made a string of false claims in the wake of major defeats in Iraq and Syria.

In Tehran, Rouhani watched a military parade that included ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and US military bases in the Mideast. Rouhani said the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal was an attempt to get Iran to give up its military arsenal. United Nations inspectors say Iran is still complying with the deal, which saw it limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

“Iran neither put its defensive arms aside nor lessens its defensive capabilities,” Rouhani said. “Iran will add to its defensive power day by day.”

Saturday’s attack comes after a coordinated June 7, 2017 Islamic State group assault on parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. At least 18 people were killed and more than 50 wounded.

That assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks in the decades after the tumult surrounding the revolution.

In the last decade, mass-casualty militant attacks have been incredibly rare. In 2009, more than 40 people, including six Guard commanders, were killed in a suicide attack by Sunni extremists in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province.