Iran official says U.S. behind al-Qaeda attacks

Iran Focus: a pro-MEK website

Iran’s Interior Minister accused the United States of using its infiltrators in al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks that would serve its interests, government-owned newspapers in Tehran reported on Saturday. READ MORE

Radical Shiite cleric Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said that Iran had “specific intelligence” proving that the U.S. had infiltrated al-Qaeda and ordered its cells to carry out terrorist attacks to convince other members of the group that they are genuine devotees.

“We have specific intelligence that America has infiltrated al-Qaeda with certain individuals and has even given [its cells] the orders for terrorist strikes in order to strengthen their position”, Pour-Mohammadi told a meeting of local officials in the southern city of Kerman.

He also blamed “foreigners” for being behind a spate of bombings in the south-western Iranian oil-city of Ahwaz in order to destabilise the country.

“The amount of explosives that security forces discovered in Khuzistan shows that there was an extensive plan to deal a blow to the Islamic Republic, and the details will soon be divulged”, he said.

Pour-Mohammadi, whose career at the top of Iran’s secret police and intelligence agencies spanned over two decades before he moved on to the Interior Ministry, said Western governments did not expect the “strength of reactions by the Muslim world” over the issue of cartoons depicting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad.