Editorial: Time bomb ticks

CHENNAI: Two suicide bombings were carried out in Iran on Wednesday, which claimed 89 lives. The strikes targeted a commemoration for an Iranian general slain in a 2020 US drone hit in Iraq. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility, describing the strike as part of a new campaign linked to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Prior to Wednesday’s blasts, the deadliest terror campaign to target Iran since the revolution was the 1981 truck bombing of the Islamic Republican Party’s headquarters in Tehran, which killed at least 72 people. Before that, in 1978, just ahead of the revolution, an act of arson at the Cinema Rex in Abadan killed hundreds.

Experts in Middle East affairs said the latest strike will embolden extremists, who will take advantage of the chaos gripping the region amid Israel’s military engagement. The blasts had taken place at a memorial honouring General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force.

Considered an icon by supporters of Iran’s theocracy, he was part of the Iranian response to the Islamic State in Syria, which focussed on keeping embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in power. Soleimani also had extensive ties to proxy groups around the wider Mideast, which included Hamas. However, the US, which eliminated Soleimani aggrieved over its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers, viewed Soleimani as the mastermind behind roadside bombings targeting US soldiers in Iraq.

Iranian state television sought to link the US to the episode, re-broadcasting comments from 2016 from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who wrongly accused then-President Barack Obama of being the “founder” of the Islamic State. Observers believe that Iran has multiple foes that could be behind the assault, including exile groups, militant organisations and state actors.

While Israel has carried out strikes in Iran over its nuclear programme, it has conducted targeted assassinations, not mass casualty bombings. Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State group have conducted large-scale assaults in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran. The irony is that Tehran itself has been arming militant groups over the past few decades, including Hamas, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The bombings in Iran came a day after Israel launched a mission that killed a deputy head of Hamas in Beirut, Lebanon, but that attack caused limited casualties in a densely populated neighbourhood of the Lebanese capital. To top it off, last week, a suspected Israeli operation had killed a Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria.

As a counter, both Hezbollah and the Houthis have launched assaults targeting Israel that they say come on behalf of the Palestinians. This week, the US and 12 allies issued a final warning of sorts to Houthi rebels to cease their attacks on vessels in the Red Sea or face potential targeted military action. The militants have so far carried out 23 attacks in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

The recent bombing in Iran is yet another provocation in the Middle-East that could have far-reaching ramifications. Having stoked a raw nerve in America and its western allies, owing to the implications on trade and commerce, the Gulf crisis risks spiralling from a proxy war to a full-blown territorial conflict. As a former NATO commander said, the chances of a regional war has gone up from 15% to 30% — which is an uncomfortably high probability.