Iran now says insurgents who attacked them were from Pakistan

NY Times:

The Iranian Foreign Ministry charged Sunday that Sunni insurgents from Iran used Pakistan as a base to plan a bombing that killed 11 people and wounded more than 30 in the southeastern border city of Zahedan last week. The ministry said it had demanded an explanation from the Pakistani ambassador.

“We summoned the Pakistani ambassador to explain what happened,” Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the ministry, said during his weekly news conference on Sunday. “Both sides will suffer from insecurity and we decided to set up a committee to raise the security at the borders.”

A car loaded with explosives detonated in front of a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards last Wednesday.

A second bomb was set off in Zahedan on Friday evening. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that it caused no casualties. But the news agency said the police clashed with an armed group and exchanged gunfire after the blast.

Zahedan, the capital of the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, is home to many ethnic Baluchis, who are Sunni Muslims. A majority of Iranians are Shiites. A Baluchi group opposed to the government, the Jondollah Organization of Iran, claimed responsibility for both attacks.

A senior security official said 65 people had been arrested in connection to the blasts.

Newspapers in Tehran reported Sunday that the state-run Hamoun channel in Sistan-Baluchistan broadcast a two-minute confession by a suspect, Nasrollah Shamsi Zehi, who was accused of being involved in the deadly bombing. He said he had robbed a bank in Zahedan, then escaped to Pakistan where he was trained by Jondollah for two months and was told that he would receive $1,200 for each mission.

Iran has accused the United States and Britain of provoking the Sunni insurgents. The authorities have said that the efforts are part of the plot to sow discord among Sunnis and Shiites in the country. Gen. Mohammad Ghaffari, a commander of security forces in the province, told the Fars news agency that a film that was confiscated from the suspects proved that the group was “affiliated to intelligence agencies of some of the foreign countries, such as the U.S. and Britain.”

...

Iran has used faked photos to make a case that the weapons of the insurgents were from the US. It is interesting that Pakistan is supposed to be the base for these attacks, yet there si no mention of al Qaeda or the Taliban. For that matter there is no mention of the many Sunni states who could easily pay sponsor such operations since they feel threatened by Iran's attempt to assert itself. The Saudis would probably have no difficulty in finding a charitable contribution for such operations.

Gateway Pundit has the story and the pixs of Iranians swift hanging of the man they claim was behind the insurgent attack. Don't expect editorials condemning the hanging like those that followed Saddam's demise at the end of a rope.