[NY Times]
The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday for the bombing attack that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran, a day before, during a memorial procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, according to a post on the extremist group’s official Telegram account.
The extremist group called the attack a “dual martyrdom operation,” and described how two militants approached a ceremony at the tomb of General Suleimani and detonated explosive belts strapped to their bodies “near the grave of the hypocrite leader.”
The general, a widely revered and feared Iranian military officer who was the architect of an Iranian-led and -funded alliance of Shiite groups across the Middle East, was assassinated four years ago in an American drone attack.
The Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim organization, considers its mission to kill apostate Muslims, including Shiites.
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Iran, a majority-Shiite country, is led by a theocratic government in which Shiite clerics are in charge.
In a statement, the Islamic State identified the two attackers as Omar al-Mowahid and Sayefulla al-Mujahid. The group is composed of local affiliates across the Muslim world, but it did not specify which regional organization was behind the bombings.
The bombing in Iran was the latest bloody episode in the Islamic State’s targeting of Iran, which it considers an irredeemable sectarian foe, one that, along with a U.S.-led coalition, had a hand in defeating the group in Syria and Iraq.
It was General Suleimani who built a network of Shiite militias there to repel the group and personally directed efforts to fight it.
The Islamic State, whose affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, has repeatedly threatened Iran over what it says is its polytheism and apostasy, has claimed responsibility for several previous attacks on Iran.
The most recent came in October 2022, when a gunman killed 13 people at a shrine in the city of Shiraz. An Islamic State statement claiming responsibility for that attack said it had aimed to kill Shiites — framing the shootings as the continuation of an ancient clash between Sunnis and Shiites, whose religious schism goes back to a seventh-century dispute over the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad.
Thursday’s statement used the same derogatory term for Shiites, roughly translated as “rejectionists” or “refusal infidels,” as in the 2022 statement.
The Shiraz shooting followed twin attacks in June 2017 on Tehran, where gunmen opened fire inside Parliament and suicide bombers simultaneously struck near the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s former supreme leader and founder of Iran’s clerical state, killing 17.
The group also claimed a September 2018 attack in the city of Ahvaz, where gunmen shot at a military parade, killing 25.
The Iranian authorities have also previously announced they had thwarted at least a dozen more Islamic State attacks.
Some Iranian leaders had initially appeared to blame Israel for the attack, stoking fears that the war in Gaza — in which Israel is battling Hamas, a Palestinian ally of Iran — would widen into a regional conflict. But Western officials had cast doubt on that theory, saying that although Israel is believed to have regularly carried out covert operations in Iran, they have typically been targeted operations against specific individuals, Iranian scientists or officials, or strikes to destroy nuclear or weapons facilities.
American officials said that it was unlikely that the Islamic State’s intention was to frame Israel for the bombings or set off a wider war, as had been initially feared. Instead, it was probably seizing an opportunity to hit its longtime enemy.
Iran held a national day of mourning on Thursday to honor victims of the twin explosions, which occurred not only at a tense moment in the Middle East, but also on a highly symbolic day for some Iranians — the fourth anniversary of General Suleimani’s death. General Suleimani, the powerful military leader regarded as a malign force in the West, is revered among many Iranians, especially those who support the government.
Iranian officials had put the death toll for the two blasts at 103 on Wednesday. But the interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said on Thursday that 84 people had been killed, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency.
