Iranian president's top cleric ally killed in Kurdestan

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Let the revolution begin!

Gunmen kill Iranian president's top cleric ally

TEHRAN, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The top cleric Borhan Ali, an ally of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the western province of Kurdestan, was assassinated on Sunday, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Unidentified gunmen early Sunday gunned down Borhan Ali, the provisional Sunni Friday prayer leader in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdestan province, the report said.

The assailants attacked him in front of his house in Sanandaj, according to the report.

Borhan Ali was in charge of Ahmadinejad's election campaign in Kurdestan province.

Iran's western provinces have been the hotbed of armed clashes between Iranian security forces and Kurdish militant groups, in particular the separatist Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) ,an anti-Iranian Kurdish group linked to Turkey's outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).

Some Iranian analysts said that PJAK rebels have bases in northeastern Iraq from where they operate against Iran.

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Prominent Iranian cleric shot dead

TEHRAN — Gunmen shot dead a prominent Iranian cleric on Thursday in the northwest province of Kurdistan, the official IRNA news agency reported, in the latest attack to shake the region.

Mullah Mohammed Sheikh Olislam, who represents the province in Iran's top clerical body the Assembly of Experts, was shot twice in the head by unknown attackers at a mosque in Sanandaj, Kurdistan's main city.

The 86-strong assembly is elected by the public and its members are in charge of selecting the country's supreme leader, supervising his actions and even sacking him if they deem it necessary.

It is the third attack on a high-profile figure in the region in the past week, according to IRNA.

An imam in Sanandaj, a Sunni Muslim seen as an ally of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was killed on Saturday by unknown assailants, media reported.

A judge from the city's revolutionary court also survived an attack on September 9, IRNA said.

The majority of the population in the Kurdistan region, on the border with Iraq, is Sunni.

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News from the insurgency in Baluchistan...

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Iran Says Military Commanders Killed in Suicide Blast

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Several senior officers in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps died in a suicide bombing that killed at least 29 people in Sistan-Baluchistan, the latest deadly attack in the troubled southeastern province

“The martyrs of this terrorist attack were a group of innocent Sunni and Shiite people from the area, several Baluchi tribal heads and Guards officers,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement on its Web site. In addition to the dead, the 8 a.m. local time blast wounded 28 people, the ministry said. A local official put the death toll at as many as 35.

The bombing underscores rising sectarian tension in Sistan- Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and is an entry point for opium and heroin from Afghanistan. The province has experienced political unrest and several attacks on military officials in the Shiite-led regime in recent years. A Sunni- Muslim rebel leader accepted responsibility for the blast, the state-run Iranian Students News Agency reported.

The attack’s victims included General Nur-Ali Shushtari, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards ground forces, General Mohammad-Zadeh, the Guards commander in Sistan- Baluchistan, the commander in the town of Iranshahr and the head of the Amir al-Momenin unit, the state-run Fars News agency said. A suicide bomber carried out the attack, Fars said.

Second Attack

Another group of Guard’s commanders came under attack in Sistan-Baluchistan around the same time this morning as they were driving between the towns of Sarbaz and Chabahar, the state-run Press TV news channel reported. The Guards’ convoy was turning at a road junction when a bomb exploded, according to the report, citing witnesses. Press TV didn’t mention any casualties.

Sistan-Baluchistan’s instability stems from conflicts between rival political movements and the influence of organized crime, said Mustafa Alani, director of the security and terrorism program at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

Today’s attack is “a major security breach” and has a “definite political dimension,” Alani said in a telephone interview. The aim is to “put pressure on the government for better treatment of Iran’s Sunni minority in terms of religious and national rights,” he said.

Shiite Government

Sunni Muslim-dominated Sistan-Baluchistan is headed by a Shiite-led provincial government. Iran’s population is 89 percent Shiite Muslim.

Abdolmalek Rigi, head of the Jundallah armed Sunni Muslim group, claimed responsibility for the attack, ISNA reported, citing Mohammad Marziah, the prosecutor in the provincial capital, Zahedan. The prosecutor put the death toll at as many as 35.

“I give the assurance that criminals will get the response to their anti-human act,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, according to an Islamic Republic News Agency report. “I ask authorities in charge to identify the agents of this terrorist act swiftly and decisively and bring them to justice.”

In May, at least 21 people were killed and almost 200 were injured when militants bombed a mosque in Zahedan. Jundallah, based across the border in Pakistan, said it carried out that attack. The group, “the Army of God,” also took responsibility for the February 2007 bombing of a bus in Zahedan that killed 11 civilian employees of the Revolutionary Guards.

“The goal of the terrorists is to disturb the security of the Sistan-Baluchistan province,” Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani told lawmakers, according to the IRNA. “They do not want to have economic progress in this region. But certainly the Guards will react with additional forces to establish security.”

Separate Command

The Guards have a chain of command separate from the country’s regular armed forces and responsibilities that include safeguarding the ideals of the 1979 revolution. The Guards are in charge of security in Sistan-Baluchistan, Alani said.

Ahmadinejad’s government will “take advantage of the incident, saying that threats are coming from different sources and unity is important,” Alani said. Iranian authorities will “inject more security forces” to keep Arab, Kurds and Baluchi minorities in border areas under control and “will further crack down on the opposition,” Alani said.

The Iranian government has repeatedly alleged the U.S. and the U.K. are promoting an insurgency by Iran’s ethnic minorities, including Sunni Baluchis in Sistan-Baluchistan.

“The world arrogance, by provoking its agents in the region, carried out a terrorist attack on a popular meeting between the Guards and the heads of tribes,” the Guards said in a statement, state television reported. Iranian authorities routinely refer to the U.S. as the global or world “arrogance.”

“We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. “Reports of alleged U.S. involvement are completely false.”

Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term Aug. 5 after a disputed June 12 election, the results of which opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi say were rigged. His victory, backed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led to weeks of mass protests and an ensuing crackdown by the authorities, during which some 4,000 people were arrested. Iranian officials said 36 people were killed in the violence, while the opposition put the toll at 72.

Ahmadinejad rejects the allegation that the outcome was rigged and has accused opposition leaders of playing into the hands of foreign powers to destabilize the Islamic regime.

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Kurdish rebels resume attacks in western Iran

A group of Kurdish terrorists have killed a 32-year-old Iranian security official in clashes in the northwestern city of Salmas.

Security officials in the West Azarbaijan province reported Friday that members of the terrorist PJAK (the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) confronted Khosrow Parvardeh in front of his home and shot him dead.

""They shot him more than 10 times, and then they fled the scene,"" said a local police official on conditions of anonymity.

Iran's western borders often witness deadly clashes between Iranian armed forces and the outlawed PJAK, which is considered to be an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The PKK is recognized as a terrorist group by a number of countries and organizations including Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the U.S. and European Union and the United Nations.

With the main goal of establishing an independent Kurdish state, PJAK has been staging cross-border attacks in Iran since 2004.

An April 10, 2006 report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that U.S. troops were establishing contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups in Iran such as the PJAK rebels.

Later in November 2006 Hersh wrote that, ""Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran.""

According to Hersh, Israel has been providing the Kurdish group with ""equipment and training."" The group has also been given ""a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S..""

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Iran says PKK-linked group claims prosecutor’s killing

An outlawed Kurdish group has claimed responsibility for the killing of a prosecutor in a northwestern Iranian city, the ISNA news agency reported, citing an Iranian official.

Vali Haji Gholizadeh, a prosecutor in the city of Khoy in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, was shot dead in front of his home on Monday night.

Mohammad Ali Mousavi, head of the provincial prosecutor’s office, said on Tuesday that three people had been arrested so far in connection with the shooting and that the investigation was still under way.

“Based on information obtained so far, the PJAK [Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan] group has claimed responsibility for the assassination of Khoy’s prosecutor,” ISNA quoted him as saying, without giving details.

Another official earlier said four suspects had been arrested.

Iranian security forces often clash with members of the outlawed PJAK, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which took up arms in 1984 to fight for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.

Like Iraq and Turkey, Iran has a large Kurdish population, mainly living in the Islamic republic’s northwest and west.

Iran sees PJAK, which seeks autonomy for Kurdish areas in Iran and shelters in Iraq’s northeastern border provinces, as a terrorist group. The United States, Iran’s arch-foe, in February of last year also branded PJAK as a terrorist organization. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by a large majority of the international community, including the US.

In 2008, the Turkish military conducted a major operation against the PKK in northern Iraq, and Turkish warplanes have since carried out regular cross-border bombing raids against targets in the mountainous region. Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ said at the time that Turkey and Iran were sharing intelligence and coordinating military operations against the PKK. The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in 2008 to expand their security cooperation.