Page 50 - bne_Magazine_July_2017

50 I Eurasia bne July 2017
National prestige was partly shielded by very slender state TV coverage of the terrorist incidents.
An unlikely story: terror in Tehran
By Will Conroy in Prague
Iran on the morning of June 7
found itself cast in the unlikely role of victim of terrorism. Unlikely, that is, to those who took Donald Trump at his word when – in Saudi Arabia of all places – he broadly condemned Teh- ran for being by far the Middle East’s most active sponsor of terror groups.
The twin gun and suicide bomb attacks on Iran’s parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini – death toll so far 13, with 42 wounded – were something of a wake-up call to those who might think the Iranians are somehow entangled with groups who terrorise
the West, such as Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda. In fact, it was the former that quite quickly claimed responsibility
for the attacks on two of the Islamic Republic’s most symbolic places, even posting gruesome video footage of a bloodied body lying amid the battle that ensued in the building of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in central Tehran.
Sunni Islamist IS and Al-Qaeda both
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have funding and ideological roots, as well as many recruits, that experts trace back to Iran’s regional arch- rival Saudi Arabia. The two groups are, of course, sworn enemies of the Shiite Iranians, though until now neither had ever claimed to have staged a terrorist attack in Iran.
Tehran, in fact, has not experienced a major terrorist attack in more than 30 years, meaning the bloody episode
it has just gone through has rather unsettled Iranian society after its lengthy period of relative tranquillity – notwithstanding the series of phlegmatic selfies posted by Iranian MPs from the parliamentary chamber, while the terrorists, who gained entry to other parts of the building dressed as women, were being besieged.
The terrorism that Iran can be said to have faced in recent years amounts to attacks made by Sunni militant groups, and occasionally Kurdish militia, mostly in remote areas far from the capital.
One group, Jundallah, also known as
the People's Resistance Movement of Iran (PRMI), and its successor group Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice), have been waging a deadly insurgency for almost
a decade. The terrorist militants are based in Pakistan’s unstable province
of Balochistan and make murderous raids into the poor Iranian southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan. Iran sees Jundallah and Jaish ul-Adl as groups connected to the Taliban and their opium revenues, while officials often accuse Saudi Arabia of providing the militant terrorists with financial
as well as ideological support.
In early April, a mid-ranking Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander was gunned down in Sistan and Baluchistan, while in an April 26 ambush in the province, Jaish ul-Adl killed 10 border guards. That led to Tehran warning Islamabad that it would hit bases inside Pakistan if the government did not confront the militants.