Iran alleges US role in bombing

Iranian officials have accused the United States of being involved in a bombing that killed 11 and wounded more than 30 in the southeastern border city of Zahedan on Feb. 14. Bullet cartridges bearing a US insignia and English lettering were among the weaponry seized from Sunni militants suspected of killing 11 members of the Shiite-dominated elite Revolutionary Guards, Iranian officials said. A senior security official said 65 people had been arrested in connection to the blast. A photograph of a cartridge box, along with an array of other ammunition, was published by Iranian newspapers and agencies. The Iranians did not provide direct access to the weapons and explosives, drawing skepticism from analysts, and there was no way to evaluate the claims independently. But Iran is worried that the United States is quietly helping Iranian opposition groups foment internal instability, even while the Bush administration is directly confronting Iran over its nuclear program and its alleged arming of Shiite militants in Iraq. Iranian officials in the southeastern region of Sistan-Baluchestan, where a bus carrying the troops was struck by explosives from a booby-trapped car, announced the allegations of US and British involvement in the attack. "Washington and London are facing serious challenges as their interests in the Middle East region have been endangered. Since the Islamic Republic is the main center of anti-US struggles, they are seeking to trouble Iran through a series of challenges, including terrorist attacks and unrest," an unnamed local official, identified as the political director of the Sistan-Baluchestan province, told the semi-official Fars news agency. He said weapons used in the attack were US and British-made. "Moreover, the arrested terrorist agents have confessed that they have been trained by English-speaking people," the official said. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Marine Maj. Rebecca Goodrich-Hinton, said that officials had no comment in response to the allegations from Tehran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that the militants used Pakistan as a base to plan the bombing and it said that it had demanded an explanation from the Pakistani ambassador. "We summoned the Pakistani ambassador to explain what happened," Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the ministry, said during his weekly news conference. "Both sides will suffer from insecurity and we decided to set up a committee to raise the security at the borders," he said. Responsibility for the bus bombing and another explosion the following day was claimed by the Sunni militant group Jundallah, or God's Brigade, which has been blamed for past attacks on Iranian troops in the region. Gen. Mohammad Ghaffari, a commander of security forces in the province, told the Fars news agency that a film that was confiscated from the suspects proved that the group was "affiliated to intelligence agencies of some of the foreign countries, such as the US and Britain." Iran blamed the United States and Britain for a series of bombings in the southern city of Ahwaz in Khuzestan Province in 2006. Those bombings were also carried out by Iranian Sunnis. The government hanged 12 men after accusing them of carrying out the attacks, which killed eight people. Over the past year, Iran has seen a wave of protests and bombings from non-Shiite minorities, especially Sunni Muslims living along the nation's western border with Iraq and its eastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the bombing occurred last week. Some analysts said a large amount of US military equipment supplied to Iran in the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution is still in use, and the existence of US-manufactured ammunition, if it exists, does not prove US involvement in the recent attacks. Stratfor, a Texas-based security and intelligence analysis firm, said in a report released on Feb. 17 that the attacks "fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime." It said a "covert intelligence war" between Iran and the United States is "well under way." Newsweek reported that White House officials are taunting Iran into action that the United States could use as an excuse for an attack. "They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [the United States] would be forced to retaliate for," Hillary Mann, former director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, told the magazine.