ANKARA—Iran said on Thursday that gunmen and bombers who attacked Tehran were Iranian members of the ISIS terrorist group who had fought in the militants’ strongholds in Syria and Iraq—deepening the regional ramifications of the assaults.
The attackers raided Iran’s parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum on Wednesday morning, in a rare strike at the heart of the Islamic Republic. Authorities said the death count had risen to 17 and scores were wounded.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards have also said regional rival Saudi Arabia was involved, fuelling tensions between Sunni Muslim power Riyadh and Shi'ite power Tehran as they vie for influence in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia dismissed the accusation.
Iran’s intelligence ministry said on Thursday five of attackers who died in the assault had been identified as Iranians who had joined the hardline Sunni Muslim terrorists of ISIS on their main battlegrounds in Iraq and Syria.
“They earlier left Iran and were involved in the crimes of the terrorist group in Raqqa and Mosul,” the ministry said, referring to ISIS’s effective capital in Syria and a city it captured in Iraq.
“Last year, they returned to Iran ... to carry out terrorist attacks in the holy cities of Iran,” the ministry added in a statement on state news agency IRNA.
