Iranian paramilitary commander says U.S., Israel "behind" Kerman blasts

TEHRAN, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- An influential commander of Iran's paramilitary Basij forces said on Thursday that the U.S. and Israel "are behind the scenes" of a twin bombing near the tomb of a top Iranian general in Kerman, southeastern Iran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Gholamreza Soleimani, who is not related to the slain general, made the remarks at a ceremony in Isfahan, western Iran, to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike near Baghdad's airport.

He said the bombings in Kerman, which killed at least 84 people and wounded 284 others, were connected to recent Israeli assassinations of a Hamas leader in Beirut and an Iranian commander in Syria.

He said Israel had failed to destroy Hamas in Gaza and was now resorting to "precision strikes" outside the Palestinian territory.

"So we have witnessed the assassinations of such figures as (Seyyed Razi) Mousavi and (Saleh) al-Arouri," he said, according to Tasnim.

Mohammad Jamshidi, the Iranian president's deputy chief of staff for political affairs, made similar implications in a post on social media platform X earlier Thursday.

"Washington says USA and Israel had no role in (the) terrorist attack in Kerman, Iran. Really? A fox smells its own lair first," he wrote.

He said the U.S. and Israel were responsible for the "crime" and that "terrorism is just a tool."

U.S. officials had rejected on Wednesday any suggestion that it or its ally Israel was behind the deadly blasts.

"The United States was not involved in any way. And the suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous. And No. 2, we have no reason to believe that Israel is involved in this," Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Wednesday.

The United Nations, European Union, and several countries including Russia, Türkiye, and Germany denounced the blasts.

The blasts occurred about 20 minutes apart around 3 p.m. local time (1130 GMT) on Thursday at the cemetery in Kerman, where thousands of people had gathered to commemorate late general Soleimani's death.

The official IRNA news agency said the first blast was about 700 meters from Soleimani's tomb and the second was a kilometer away.

Rahman Jalali, the deputy governor of Kerman province for political and security affairs, said the explosions were carried out by "terrorists," IRNA reported.