Iran presidential candidate hints at bombings being “insider job”

Iran Focus:

One of the eight candidates bidding to become president in the upcoming election said that the recent spate of pre-election bombings in Iran were not the work of the main Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK). READ MORE

“Members of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation could not be blamed for the bombings,” Mostafa Moin told an election rally in the central town of Khomein. “We must discover which criminal gang is responsible for these acts”.

Moin’s comments added fuel to speculation that the bombings in Tehran, Ahwaz and Zahedan could be the work of elements within the ruling theocracy. Senior officials of Iran’s dreaded secret police, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, were found guilty of involvement in a spate of bombings and assassinations in the 1990s. READ MORE

Mostafa Moin, a former Minister of Education under incumbent President Mohammad Khatami, said the authorities had to “discover the relationship between the bombings and the elections”.

In a rare departure from the official terminology for the MeK, Moin did not refer to the group as “hypocrites”, but used the name the group itself uses.

Iranian officials reported that seven people were killed and another 75 injured as a result of four bomb blasts in Ahwaz on Sunday. Two other explosions in Tehran later in the night left two dead and four injured.

After hours of contradictory statements on the motives behind the bombings, Ali Aghamohammadi, the government’s chief security spokesman, blamed the bombing on “opposition groups calling for a boycott of the elections”. He said some of the perpetrators “may be people who belong to the [MeK]”.

In statements sent to international news agencies, the MeK strongly denied any involvement in the blasts in Ahwaz and Tehran.

“It’s just a measure of the mullahs’ despair over what looks set to be a solid boycott of their sham elections on June 17 that they are falsely blaming these bombings on the Mojahedin,” Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the coalition National Council of Resistance that includes the MeK among its members, said in a telephone interview.

The NY Times reported Monday that similar bombings to those exploded in Tehran occured in Qom last week, but were the work of hardline vigilantes.