Iran’s foreign minister denounced on Thursday the United States response to a pair of deadly assaults in Tehran as “repugnant,” as the death toll in the attacks rose to 17, with 52 others wounded.
Armed assailants carried out brazen attacks on two high-profile sites on Wednesday — the Parliament building, and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic — adding to tensions in the Middle East.
Five “veteran Daesh terrorists” were involved in the terrorist attacks, the Iranian government said on Thursday, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
The five men left Iran to fight for the terrorist group in Mosul, Iraq, and in Raqqa, Syria, the group’s de facto capital, according to a government statement. They returned to Iran last July or August under the leadership of a commander with the nom de guerre Abu Aisha, and “intended to carry out terrorist operations in religious cities.”
Iran’s foreign minister denounced on Thursday the United States response to a pair of deadly assaults in Tehran as “repugnant,” as the death toll in the attacks rose to 17, with 52 others wounded.
Armed assailants carried out brazen attacks on two high-profile sites on Wednesday — the Parliament building, and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic — adding to tensions in the Middle East.
Five “veteran Daesh terrorists” were involved in the terrorist attacks, the Iranian government said on Thursday, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
The five men left Iran to fight for the terrorist group in Mosul, Iraq, and in Raqqa, Syria, the group’s de facto capital, according to a government statement. They returned to Iran last July or August under the leadership of a commander with the nom de guerre Abu Aisha, and “intended to carry out terrorist operations in religious cities.”
The government released photographs of the men, who were killed by security forces, but made public only their first names, saying they did not want to release their surnames because of security and privacy concerns for their families. The government said the men were “long affiliated with the Wahhabi,” the ultraconservative form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia — but stopped short of directly blaming Saudi Arabia, its rival for supremacy in the region.
There was a heightened police presence in the streets of Tehran on Thursday, most significantly near the sites of the attacks and on the subways. A deputy interior minister, Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari, also said that “law enforcement activities may increase.”
The United States responded to the dual assaults on Wednesday with a statement that expressed sympathy for the victims while also taking a swipe at the Iranian leadership.
“We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times,” President Trump said in a statement. “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”
That elicited an angry response from Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, who helped negotiate a landmark nuclear deal that Iran, the United States and other countries reached in 2015.
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“Repugnant WH statement & Senate sanctions as Iranians counter terror backed by US clients,” Mr. Zarif wrote on Twitter. “Iranian people reject such US claims of friendship.”
The foreign minister also wrote on Twitter: “Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to bring the fight to our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters despise most: the seat of democracy.”
The state-run news agency IRNA said that the death toll in the attacks had risen to 17, citing Dr. Ahmad Shojaei, who leads the country’s forensics center.
Earlier in the day, Pir-Hossein Koulivand, who leads Iran’s Medical Services Organization, said the number of wounded had risen to 52, and that 15 had been discharged from hospitals.
At least six assailants were killed, and five people have been taken into custody. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in Parliament, said that one of the assailants involved in the attack on the Khomeini shrine was a woman and that she had been arrested by the intelligence forces.
Statements of support from Iran’s allies continued to pour in on Thursday.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has received crucial support from Iran during the country’s six-year civil war, spoke by telephone with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran on Thursday and affirmed his determination to fight “terrorists and their supporters,” according to a report from Syrian state media. Both Iran and Syria portray the war as a conflict against Western- and Gulf-sponsored terrorism.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which serves as a proxy for Iran in Syria and Lebanon, also condemned the attacks, calling them part of an “international, destructive plan” backed by various governments in the region.
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