Attack on Iran`s elite guards

IRANIAN Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused US-backed Gulf Arab states of carrying out a shooting attack on a military parade that killed 25 people, almost half of them members of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards. Khamenei ordered security forces to bring to justice those responsible for one of the worst assaults ever against the Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military force in the country, which answers to him.
The allegation will likely ratchet up tensions with Iran’s rival Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, which along with the United States have been working to isolate the Islamic Republic. He did not name the regional states he believed were to blame. Israel is also a key the US ally opposed to Tehran. An Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement called the Ahvaz National Resistance, which seeks a separate state in oil-rich Khuzestan province, claimed responsibility for the attack. Islamic State militants also claimed responsibility. Neither claim provided evidence. All four attackers were killed.
The assault, which wounded at least 70 people, targeted a viewing stand where Iranian officials had gathered in the city of Ahvaz to watch an annual event marking the start of the Islamic Republic’s 1980-88 war with Iraq, state television said. Iran has been relatively stable compared with neighbouring Arab countries that have grappled with upheaval since the 2011 uprisings across the Middle East. Women and children died in the assault, state news IRNA agency reported. The assailants had hidden weapons near the parade route several days in advance, said Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, a senior spokesman for Iran’s armed forces.
While Islamic State is not funded with US or Gulf states money, the province of Khuzestan, from which the Ahvaz Resistance comes, is known for harbouring negative feelings about what the ethnic Arabs consider to be an occupation of its lands by the Persians. The inhabitants express support for greater autonomy and actively support Sunni states like Saudi Arabia. So whether true or not, there exists a belief that the Arabs and other minority groups who live in Khuzestan province are discriminated against.
Whether it is a purely internal matter or whether ISIS has had a hand in it the Iran government must quickly find out the root cause behind the recent attacks, if only to show their competence in running the administration. It would be wise for them to listen to the grievances of the minority Arabs in Khuzestan, if only to lubricate internal politics. Iran has too many extremely powerful enemies abroad to make fresh ones at home.