TEHRAN – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday appeared to blame Arabseparatists for an attack on a military parade the previous day that left29 people dead.
“It is absolutely clear to us who has done this, which group it is and towhom they are affiliated,” Rouhani said on state television shortly beforeleaving Tehran for the UN General Assembly in New York.
“Those who have caused this catastrophe … were Saddam’s mercenaries aslong as he was alive and then changed masters,” he said, referring to lateIraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“One of the countries in the south of the Persian Gulf took care of theirfinancial, weaponry and political needs,” Rouhani added.
“All these little mercenary countries we see in this region are backed byAmerica. It is the Americans who incite them”, he said.
Four militants on Saturday attacked the parade commemorating the beginningof the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, launched by Baghdad, in the southwestern cityof Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan Province.
Officials and an eyewitness said the gunmen were dressed in Iranianmilitary uniforms and sprayed the crowd with gunfire using weapons they hadstashed in a nearby park.
The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group claimed responsibility for the rareassault.
But from the start Iranian officials saw an Arab separatist movement, theAhwazi Democratic Popular Front (ADPF), also known as Al-Ahwazi, as themain suspect.
On Saturday, the London-based Iran International TV aired an interview withYaqoub Hor Altostari, presented as a spokesman for ADPF, indirectlyclaiming responsibility for the attack and calling it “resistance againstlegitimate targets”.
Iran in response summoned diplomats from Denmark, the Netherlands andBritain to complain about them “hosting some members of the terroristgroup” and “double standards in fighting terrorism,” the foreign affairsministry said.
The British charge d’affaires “was told that it is not acceptable that thespokesman for the mercenary Al-Ahwazi group be allowed to claimresponsiblity for this terrorist act through a London-based TV network,”said the ministry’s spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi.
“It is expected that (the Danish and Dutch) governments hand over theperpetrators of this attack and anyone related to them to Iran for a fairtrial,” he added. – APP/AFP