October 05, 2018
In a devastating terrorist attack, five men believed to be Arab separatists opened fire on a military parade in Ahvaz, killing 24 people, half of them members of the military and half spectators, including a four-year-old boy.
The attack took place during the annual military parade September 22 to mark the Iraqi invasion in 1980 that launched the eight-year Iran-Iraq War.
Various Iranian officials blamed the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE with most of the propaganda blasts targeted at the United States. The regime appeared to want to minimize the focus on ethnic Arab dissidents, who have been seeking to secede from Iran for decades, since long before the Islamic Republic.
Two terrorist groups claimed responsibility for the attack—the Islamic State and Al-Ahwaziyah, also known as the Ahwaz National Resistance, a long-time Arab separatist organization.
The first announcement from the Islamic State said the attack was targeted at President Rohani during his speech at the parade. But Rohani was speaking to a parade in Tehran, while the attack was in Ahvaz. That discredited the Islamic State claim. But hours later, the group released a video showing three men in a car saying they were on their way to launch the attack. Their names corresponded to names that Iran later released for the gunmen. Two of the men spoke Arabic with Iraqi accents. The third spoke Farsi.
Al-Ahwaziyah also announced a name that corresponded to one of the killers later named by Iran.
That led to speculation that the two groups might have joined together to carry out the bloody attack, though neither claimed involvement by anyone other than itself.
The five gunmen gathered in a park near the viewing stand for the parade. They fired on the marching troops with their gunfire often going across the street where the parade was being held and into the crowd of onlookers standing on the other side.
It would seem logical that their main target would have been the viewing stand filled with VIPs from the military and the government. But video does not show any activity at the viewing stand. The regime said 68 people were injured, but that none of the dead or injured was on the viewing stand. (One week after the attack, the state news agency said five of the injured remained hospitalized.)
That led to speculation that the terrorists, who were said to be wearing Iranian military uniforms, were uncovered before they could reach the viewing stand and began their attack earlier than planned.
A video seen by the Iran Times and taken from in front of the viewing stand lasted 77 seconds. Gunfire was already underway before the video began but troops were marching down the street. Then the intensity of gunfire picked up and the marchers began running away from the sound of gunfire almost as one. When the video stopped, the gunfire was still underway and intense.
Automatic weapons were being used and many hundreds of gunshots could be heard, though there was no way of knowing how many of the shots were fired by the terrorists and how many were fired by the regime’s forces. While the regime acknowledged 24 dead, it did not say if any of the dead were killed by regime gunfire, a strong possibility when there is mass gunfire in a crowded location.
The Islamic Republic released photos and names of the five men: Ayyad Mansouri, Fuad Mansouri, Ahmad Mansouri, Javad Sari and Hassan Darvishi. The first four photos were of the corpses of the men. The fifth was a screen shot taken from the IS video of Darvishi. Officials said all five came from the Ahvaz area. The father of Darvishi said his son had been under treatment for mental problems, according to the Fars news agency.
The Mansouris were described as two brothers and a cousin. That suggested the band of gunmen was assembled locally on its own and was not something patched together abroad by IS or Al-Ahwaziyah. But the role of the two terror groups remained unclear.
Abdullah Ganji, the managing director of the ultra-right Tehran daily Javan said the suicide machinegun attack used in Ahvaz resembled the practices of IS more than the planted bobs and hit-and-run attacks long used by Arab separatists. “To kill until you are killed, without trying to leave the scene, is the method of IS,” he wrote.
IS launched a similar suicide attack by gunmen in June of last year in Tehran, striking the Majlis office building and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Ganji did not mention that neither Israel nor the United States have used such attacks. The Americans take the offensive with bombers and drones. The Israelis have for decades used targeted assassinations that hit named figures among their enemies, as, for example, in the assassinations a few years ago of four Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran.
The Islamic Republic initially said there were four attackers and 25 troops and bystanders killed. After two days, it changed that to five attackers and 24 innocents. It said that one of the attackers had been mistakenly placed with the local dead. It appears to have changed the toll after IS and Al-Ahwaziyah said there were five killers.
Two days after the attack, the Intelligence Ministry said it had raided the “hideout” of the attackers and arrested 22 people found there along with explosives and communications equipment.
That raised eyebrows. After such an attack, the raiders’ backups normally scatter to all points of the compass. They do not normally remain in one location where it is easier for them to be apprehended.
The chairman of the Majlis National Security Committee, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said the death toll was probably exacerbated because a group of snipers at the viewing stand did not open fire on the terrorists. He said a video shows a cameraman begging a sniper to open fire, but the sniper saying he had to await his commander’s orders to open fire. Falahatpisheh said there were eight or nine snipers at the scene, presumably there to act if the viewing stand were attacked.
The Intelligence Ministry said, “Foreign sponsors and supporters of this terrorist act have also been identified. More information will be provided on them in due course.” In the week since the attack, nothing further has been said about foreign involvement beyond the generic charge of Americans, Israelis, Saudis and Emiratis being implicated.
For example, Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said “regional terror sponsors” were responsible and he holds “their US masters accountable.”
President Rohani promised a “crushing response,” not only on the terrorists but also on foreigners “who give intelligence and propaganda support to these terrorists.”
Supreme Leader Ali Kha-menehi said, “This crime is a continuation of the plots of the regional states that are puppets of the United States and their goal is to create insecurity in our country.”
All these comments were made before Iran had even identified the gunmen by name. None of these comments blamed anyone born in Iran.
Pasdar Brig. Gen. Esmail Kosari said, “The remarks by the UAE and Saudi officials on the terrorist attack and the documents show that the Americans give orders to Riyadh and supported this attack…. Some documents have been found in Iraq and Syria that show the Americans supporting Saudi Arabia and the Saudi assistance for the terrorists.” No documents have been produced by the Islamic Republic. The assertion that the regime is in possession of documentary proof is common—and the failure to release any such documents is equally as common.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis said it was “ludicrous” for Iran to allege US involvement and dismissed threats of revenge. “I am hopeful that cooler, wiser heads will prevail,” he said.
One Iranian official who didn’t stick with the official line was Brig. Gen. Nozar Nemati, the deputy commander of Iran’s regular Army. He told the funeral for the dead that it was too early to say whether Western intelligence agencies had been involved in the attack and suggested it might have originated closer to home. “They are the same people who were followers of Saddam at the onset of the [1980-88] war, and they are pursuing the same goal,” the state news agency quoted him as saying.
As part of the very angry reaction by the regime, the Fars news agency, which is linked to the Pasdaran, posted a video threatening missile attacks on the capitals of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirate in response. But the video apparently went too far in the eyes of the leadership and it was soon removed
Iran has twice launched missile attacks on foreign targets in recent years. In 2017, it fired several missiles at various IS targets in Syria. There have been conflicting reports on whether those missiles hit any of their targets. Early in September, the Pasdaran fired much shorter-range missiles at the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran in northern Iraq and hit the very room in which the party’s leadership was holding a meeting.