Iran Accuses U.S. & Allies Of Plotting Military Parade Attack

Senior Iranian officials have accused the United States and its allies “in the region” of supporting the group that attacked a military parade held on Saturday.

Over 25 people were killed and over 60 wounded in the terrorist attack on the parade in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province, on the morning of September 22. The attack came as the country marked the anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.

The Ahvaz National Resistance, the Arab separatist al-Ahvaziya armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack. Four gunmen dressed in military uniforms sprayed bullets into a crowd of marching soldiers, bystanders and government officials watching from a nearby stand.

“Those who are repeatedly claiming to advocate human rights in the world must be accountable towards these crimes,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani told reporters at Mehrabad Airport before leaving for New York to attend the 73rd United Nations General Assembly on September 23.

“It is completely clear for us who did this and what group they are and to whom they are affiliated,” Rouhani said according to the president’s official website. “It is America who supports these little mercenary countries in the region. It is Americans who are provoking them. It is Americans who provide them with their required necessities to perpetrate such crimes.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader followed suit in his words, also linking the attack with the United States and its "allies in the region."

“These ruthless mercenaries who open fire on women, children and innocent people are affiliated with the same mendacious and hypocritical pretenders who are constantly speaking of human rights. Their spiteful hearts cannot tolerate the manifestation of national might during the performance of Armed Forces. Their crime is the extension of the plots by vassal U.S. states in the region who have set themselves the goal of creating insecurity in the country,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying, according to reports by Mehr news agency.

The ambassadors of the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as the British Chargé d’Affaires, were summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry to receive a formal protest by the Iranian government for what it perceives as western interference and what the Iranian Student’s News Agency (ISNA) called “support for terrorist elements."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said that on Sunday the United Arab Emirates’ Charge d’Affaires was also being summoned, “over biased allegations made by the UAE political advisor in support of a terrorist attack on a military parade in Ahvaz.”

“Terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime have attacked Ahvaz,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his Twitter account. “Children and journos among casualties. Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks. Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of Iranian lives.”

Iranian officials have not directly named countries in the region they believe to have been behind the attack, but the comments coming from leaders are believed to be directed at Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel, all which have sour relations with Tehran for varying reasons.

“Saturday’s attack on the military parade in Ahvaz was a response to the repression of Ahwazi Arabs. We have no choice but to resist. Al-Ahvaziya group carried out today’s attack against the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iranian military forces,” the group’s spokesman said in an interview with Iran International.

Ramezan Sharif, the spokesman for the Iranian military’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps told ISNA that “the attack by some elements of al-Ahvaziya group, which is fed by Saudi Arabia, aimed to overshadow the magnificence of the parade by the Iranian armed forces”.

Ahwazi Arabs are ethnic minority in Iran’s Khuzestan province, which shares a border with Iraq. The area has seen separatist violence in the past which Iran has blamed on its regional rivals. Kurdish rebels also frequently attack military patrols within these border areas.

On June 7, 2017, in Tehran, 17 people were killed and 43 wounded in simultaneous attacks on the Iranian Parliament and the Mausoleum of the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first inside Iran claimed by Islamic State, better known as “ISIS” or “IS.”