Hundreds of people gathered this morning in Kerman, southeastern Iran, to mourn the deaths of the 89 victims caused by Wednesday's double explosion at the entrance to the mausoleum dedicated to Qassem Soleimani, the general of the revolutionaries, in January 2020 Guards killed by an American drone. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also paid a solemn tribute at Soleimani's grave, using the opportunity to revive his patriotic rhetoric against the country's unidentified enemies. “Our forces will choose the time and place to act,” Raisi said, quoted by the Irna news agency. A way to quench the thirst for justice of the grieving crowd that gathered at the holy site of Kerman, chanting “revenge.” What happened on Wednesday is indeed the bloodiest attack Iran has ever suffered since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, but the Tehran regime itself appears to want to cloud the truth about the attack's true origins. Yesterday, ISIS claimed responsibility, saying two of its fighters blew themselves up about 20 minutes apart. Today, however, there is hardly any mention of the Islamic State's responsibility in the damning statements made by the country's leaders; on the contrary, the finger is more or less explicitly pointed elsewhere. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi made it widely known that “some people” involved in the attack were arrested thanks to the work of the intelligence service, which was able to quickly find “good leads.” His deputy, Majid Mirahmadi, added that the people – it is not known how many or who they were – had been arrested “in five cities in five provinces” for links to the events.
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi at the grave of Qassem Soleimani – Kerman, January 5, 2024 (Ansa/EPA)
conspiracy theories
End of official communication, at least for now. However, apart from this, the country's leaders continue to stir up rumors and suspicions about a foreign plot against the country, which, of course, is being orchestrated by its eternal enemies. “ISIS terrorists are merely acting as agents of America and Israel,” Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami said at the funeral, recalling that “today ISIS no longer controls any piece of land: they have disappeared and are hiding in their nests.” And Raisi himself, while refraining from publicly linking the attack to Israel, began again railing against the Jewish state, declaring that the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation was how Hamas carried out the massacre on January 7 October called, “will lead to the end of the terror Zionist regime” because “the victory of the truth and the destruction of the lie is a divine promise.”
Cover photo: The crowd at the funeral of Faezeh Rahimi, one of the victims of the Kerman attack – January 5, 2024 (Ansa-EPA/Abedin Taherkenareh)
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