Yes, Iran, not Iraq, has been rocked by five bomb blasts today, with nine people reported dead. From CBC News:
There is no explanation for the attacks, but an Iranian official suggested the bombs were linked to the presidential elections set for Friday.
Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative, is expected to win, beating a group of mainly religious hardliners.
Bombings are unusual in Iran. The attacks were the most serious in more than 10 years.
Eight people died when four bombs exploded in the western city of Ahvaz, near the Iraqi border. Hours later, a bomb in Tehran killed one. At least 40 people were injured in the attacks.
The Ahvaz bombs appeared to be placed outside official buildings or the homes of senior officials, while the Tehran blast was near a public square.
There were riots in Ahvaz in April after the government was reported to be planning to flood the local Arab population by forcing non-Arabs to move to the city.
Arabs are a tiny minority in Iran, where Persians account for about half the population and different minorities the rest.
With four of the five explosions centered in Ahvaz, this could signal the emergence of an intensified ethnic rift in Iran. It’s rather odd, to be sure, since Iran has been typically a homogeneous country despite ethnic differences throughout its history. Islam aided in cementing that homogeneity, but it seems these Arabs’ complaints supercede the religious realm and center directly on defense of their home from forced immigration. Rifts between Sunni and Shi’a exist, as well, as Sunni make up around 10 or so percent of Iran’s population, but it would seem that these rare attacks have less to do with that than with displeasure with the government itself.
The coordination needed to set off the four explosions in Ahvaz along with the one in Tehran suggests that there may be something more behind this. I won’t go as far as to suggest that a group like al-Qaeda or the Mojahedin-e-Khalq aided in these attacks (although the MEK has set off explosions in Iran targeted at the regime in the past), but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a larger overarching support structure in place here.
It’s also interesting that Tehran is claiming the explosions can be traced to the upcoming presidential election. There is no obvious connection — the Iranian reform movement is not violent. There most likely is fear within Khamanei’s circle, however, that reformers are finally tiring of the political process and may move to act outside it in the near future, probably through protests and civil disobedience. By blaming these explosions on reformers it paves the way to increased security measures to crack down on opposition movements. If reformers are painted as militant, it’ll only aid the regime in further consolidating its power. The Iranian people, hopefully, are not dense enough to fall for this, even if the state-controlled media arranges facts to make a convincing case.
Cross-posted to Digital Dissent