People familiar with Israeli operations say Israel has told allies that it isn’t involved with the explosions
At least 95 people were killed in explosions in Iran near a public ceremony commemorating the death of a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer killed in 2020 by an American airstrike, the country’s state media reported. Iranian officials said the blasts were the work of terrorists.
Some 211 others were wounded by the blasts, which took place as crowds gathered near the tomb of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, according to Iran’s government-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran said it was investigating the cause of the explosions. Officials revised the death toll down after reporting earlier in the day that 103 people had been killed in the blasts.
The blasts come at a moment of heightened tensions across the Middle East, with war raging between Israel and Hamas, an Islamist militant group that has moved closer to Iran in recent years. A senior Hamas leader, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed on Tuesday in Beirut in what Lebanese officials described as a suspected Israeli attack. The Israeli military declined to comment on whether it was responsible for the attack in Beirut.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a short statement didn’t assign blame for Wednesday’s attacks, saying “the perpetrators and criminals who were involved in this terrorist crime will soon be identified and punished for their actions.”
Some Iranian officials broadly blamed the U.S. and Israel for the blasts, without offering specifics of how the two countries might have been involved.
U.S. officials said the U.S. had no involvement in the blast, and said they had no indication Israel was behind it. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. had seen no intelligence anticipating violence surrounding the anniversary of Soleimani’s death.
The Israeli prime minister’s office and the Israeli military declined to comment on whether Israel was responsible.
