TEHRAN, 17 October 2005 — Top Iranian officials said yesterday they suspected British involvement in a double bomb attack in the ethnic-Arab dominated city of Ahvaz, despite furious denials and condemnation of the attacks from London. Two bombs exploded outside a crowded market late Saturday in Ahvaz, capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province adjacent to British-occupied southern Iraq. Five people were killed and more than 100 injured, according to the latest official toll.
“Since there are British troops present alongside our border, there is a concern over their involvement in the explosions in Ahvaz,” Alaeddin Borujerdi, the head of the Iranian Parliament’s Foreign Policy Commission, told the student news agency ISNA. “We have information on their previous involvement in the unrest in Khuzestan,” he was quoted as saying, even though the British Embassy in Tehran had quickly moved to condemn the attacks and deny any involvement.
“The explosions in Ahvaz had a British accent,” the head of Iran’s Basij volunteer militia, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, was quoted as saying by ISNA. “It’s a conspiracy,” Hejazi alleged.
Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi also told ISNA that “usually this kind of insecurity comes from the other side of the border and is guided from there.” And Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Mousapour told the Mehr news agency that “most probably those involved in the explosion were British agents who were involved in the previous incidents in Ahvaz and Khuzestan.”
The blasts occurred shortly before dusk when shoppers crowd commercial areas to buy food for iftar. In a statement, the British Embassy in Tehran voiced “its revulsion at and condemnation of the terrorist attacks”.
“There has been speculation in the past about alleged British involvement in Khuzestan. We reject these allegations. Any linkage between the British government and these terrorist outrages is without foundation,” the British Embassy statement said.
“As we have made clear officially to the government of Iran, the British government and British forces in Iraq stand ready to help in anyway we can to prevent attacks of this kind or identify those responsible and bring them to justice.”
Speaking in London, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed up the British allegations concerning Iranian meddling in Iraq. “I have every reason to believe that the British are right about this,” she told BBC radio, while telling reporters that Washington has already raised similar concerns directly with Iran. “We have tried to get over a message to them about this issue. We have channels. We use them rarely, specifically, to deliver messages,” she said.
The United States does not have an ambassador in Iran, where its interests are represented by Switzerland, while Tehran has a permanent representative at the UN in New York.
According to top officials, the United States and Britain warned Iran over its possible involvement in insurgent bomb attacks in Iraq. Iran denies meddling in Iraq and says the accusations against it are psychological warfare tied to efforts by Washington and London to report Tehran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program.
