Iranian authorities have detained 32 people in connection with a deadly twin bombing that left scores dead in Iran’s southeastern city of Kerman last week, a local judicial official has said.
“Thirty-two people have been arrested in connection with the Kerman crime case and are now under interrogation,” Mehdi Bakhshi, Kerman’s chief prosecutor, was quoted as saying by Iran’s Fars news agency on Jan. 7.
On Jan. 3, a ceremony in Kerman to mark the fourth anniversary of the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the slain commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, was rocked by two massive explosions.
According to the latest official casualty toll, 91 people were killed in the attack—the deadliest in Iran’s modern history—and more than 280 were injured. On Jan. 4, the ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for the twin bombings.
The next day, Iranian authorities announced the arrest of 11 suspects, including two who had allegedly “provided support” to two suicide bombers who carried out the attack.
In his comments to Fars, Mr. Bakhshi dismissed earlier claims that the bombs had been remotely detonated.
He also said that as many as 16 explosive devices had been found in Kerman—and defused—in the days leading up to the deadly explosions.
The prosecutor further stated that 23 “terrorists” who had been planning similar suicide attacks had been arrested near Kerman in recent months.
Soleimani was killed in Baghdad on Jan. 3, 2020, by a U.S. drone strike. He was later buried in Kerman, his hometown.
On Jan. 5, Reuters reported that intercepted communications had confirmed the role of ISIS’s Afghanistan branch—known as ISIS-Khorasan—in the Kerman attack.
The news agency cited unnamed U.S. intelligence sources to support its assertion. One of the sources described the communications intercepts as “clear-cut and indisputable.”
Said to be an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, ISIS overran vast swaths of Syria and Iraq in 2014. By 2019, the terrorist group was said to have been largely eradicated.
Nevertheless, the United States still maintains roughly 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in next-door Iraq, the latter of which shares a lengthy border with Iran.
The deployments are part of a U.S.-led coalition ostensibly tasked with preventing a resurgence of ISIS in the region.
Last week, Mohammed al-Sudani, Iraq’s prime minister, unveiled plans by Baghdad to end the U.S.-led coalition’s presence in the country.
In a Jan. 5 statement, Mr. Al-Sudani stressed his government’s “firm position on ending the international coalition [in Iraq] now that the justification for its existence has ended.”
He announced that a Shiite militia leader—with nominal ties to Iraq’s government—was killed by a U.S. strike in Baghdad.
ISIS professes a virulent hatred for Shiite Muslims and the quasi-theocratic government of Shiite Iran.
Purportedly composed of Sunni-Muslim militants, the group is said to view Shiite Muslims as “apostates” to the faith.
In 2017, ISIS claimed responsibility for a pair of deadly bombings that targeted Iran’s parliament building and the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded Iran’s Islamic Republic in 1979.
Last October, the terrorist group also claimed responsibility for an attack on a Shiite shrine in Iran’s south-central city of Shiraz that left 15 pilgrims dead.
At the time, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that ISIS’s claim of responsibility “raises questions about who created—and supports—the terrorist group in an effort to destabilize countries of West Asia.”
After last week’s attack in Kerman, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a prominent Iranian Shiite preacher, repeated claims that ISIS was a “creation” of the United States and Israel, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency.
Mr. Khatami provided no evidence for his assertions, which he made during a Nov. 5 sermon before thousands of worshippers in Tehran. However, he cited past remarks by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of “founding” the terrorist group.
President Trump made the explosive claim in a radio interview during his 2016 presidential campaign.
In the same interview, he made similar claims about Hillary Clinton, his 2016 presidential rival, who served as secretary of state under President Obama.
At the time, Ms. Clinton fired back in a social media post, saying: “No, Barack Obama is not the founder of ISIS.”
“Anyone willing to sink so low [as to make such a claim] ... should never be allowed to serve as our commander-in-chief,” she added.
In 2020, President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani, who had led Iran’s efforts to combat ISIS.
