Daily Times

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed on Sunday to exact “deadly and unforgettable” vengeance for a shooting attack on a military parade that killed 25 people, including 12 of their comrades, and Tehran accused Gulf Arab states of backing the gunmen. Saturday’s assault, one of the worst ever against the elite force of the Islamic Republic, struck a blow at its security establishment at a time when the United States and its Gulf allies are working to isolate Tehran. “Considering (the Guards’) full knowledge about the centres of deployment of the criminal terrorists’ leaders…, they will face a deadly and unforgettable vengeance in the near future,” the Guards said in a statement carried by state media. Four assailants fired on a viewing stand in the southwestern city of Ahvaz where Iranian officials had gathered to watch an annual event marking the start of the Islamic Republic’s 1980-88 war with Iraq. Soldiers crawled about as gunfire crackled. Women and children fled for their lives. Ahvaz National Resistance, an Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement which seeks a separate state in oil-rich Khuzestan province, claimed responsibility for the attack. Islamic State militants also claimed responsibility. Neither claim provided evidence. All four attackers were killed. There has been a blizzard of furious statements from top Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, accusing Iran’s adversaries the United States and Gulf kingdoms of provoking the bloodshed and threatening a tough response.

Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, rejected Rouhani’s accusations as rhetoric. “He’s got the Iranian people…protesting, every ounce of money that goes into Iran goes into his military, he has oppressed his people for a long time and he needs to look at his own base to figure out where that’s coming from,” Haley told CNN. “He can blame us all he wants. The thing he’s got to do is look in the mirror,” she said. Senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have said the Ahvaz attack was carried out by militants trained by Gulf states and Israel and backed by America. But it is unlikely the IRGC will strike any of these foes directly.

Published in Daily Times, September 24^th 2018.