TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's president on Sunday accused an unnamed, U.S.-allied country in the Persian Gulf of being behind a terror attack on a military parade that killed 25 people and wounded 60, further raising regional tensions.
Hassan Rouhani's comments came as Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned several Western diplomats, accusing their countries of providing havens for the Arab separatists who claimed Saturday's attack in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.
The country already faces turmoil in the wake of the U.S.' decision to withdraw from Iran's nuclear deal with world powers. The attack in Ahvaz, which left women and children fleeing and uniformed soldiers bloodied, has further shaken the country.
Rouhani's remarks could refer to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain -- close U.S. military allies that view Iran as a regional menace over its support for militant groups across the Middle East.
"One of the southern countries in the Persian Gulf is backing them financially, providing equipment and political support," Rouhani said of the attackers before leaving for the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "The small puppet countries in the region are backed by the U.S., and it's the U.S. that provokes them."
Iran summoned diplomats from Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands early Sunday, accusing them of harboring "members of the terrorist group" that launched the attack. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen condemned the attack and stressed that there will be "consequences" if it turns out that those responsible have connections to Denmark.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry later summoned the UAE's envoy over what it called the "irresponsible and insulting statements" of a UAE adviser, according to the semiofficial ISNA news agency. The UAE did not immediately acknowledge the summons.
Saturday's attack, in which militants disguised as soldiers opened fire on an annual Iranian military parade in Ahvaz, was the deadliest attack in the country in nearly a decade. Women and children scattered along with once-marching Revolutionary Guard soldiers as heavy gunfire rang out, the chaos captured live on state television.
The region's Arab separatists, once known for nighttime attacks on unguarded oil pipelines, claimed responsibility for the assault, and Iranian officials appeared to believe the claim. The separatists accuse Iran's Persian-dominated government of discriminating against the ethnic Arab minority. Khuzestan province, of which Ahvaz is the capital, also has been the scene of recent protests over the economy and Iran's nationwide drought.
The attack killed at least 25 people and wounded 60, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. It said gunmen wore military uniforms and targeted a riser where military and police commanders were sitting. State TV hours later reported that all four gunmen had been killed.
At least eight of the dead served in the Revolutionary Guard, an elite paramilitary unit that answers only to Iran's supreme leader, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. The Guard responded to the attack on Sunday, warning it would seek "deadly and unforgiving revenge in the near future."
The Guard said it "will spare no efforts in going after and punishing the criminals, in the region and beyond," according to a statement published on the state-run Mehr news agency.
"Sworn enemies of Iran in particular the diabolic Western-Hebrew-Arabic triangle in pursuit of their ominous goals" will "not shy away from any plots," the statement said.
Iranian officials say the U.S., Israel and their allies in the region want to destabilize the Islamic Republic by fueling chaos and sowing discontent among poorer Iranians and minority groups.
Tensions have been on the rise in Iran since President Donald Trump's administration pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord in May and began restoring sanctions that were eased under the deal. It also has steadily ramped up pressure on Iran to try to get it to stop what the U.S. calls "malign activities" in the region.
The U.S. government nevertheless strongly condemned Saturday's attack and expressed its sympathy, saying it "condemns all acts of terrorism and the loss of any innocent lives."
The Islamic State militant group also claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on its Amaaq news agency, but it provided no evidence it carried out the assault. Initially, the group wrongly said the Ahvaz attack targeted Rouhani, who was in Tehran. The militants have made a string of false claims in the wake of major defeats in Iraq and Syria.
On Sunday, Islamic State militants posted a video online of three men, two of whom spoke in Arabic, extolling the benefits of martyrdom. A third, who spoke in Farsi, said they wanted to attack the Guard. The video included no time stamps, nor any specific references to the Ahvaz attack.
The attack dominated Iranian newspaper front pages Sunday. The hard-line daily Kayhan warned that Iranians would demand Saudi Arabia feel the "hard slap" of the country's power.
Iran's government declared today as a nationwide day of public mourning, IRNA reported Sunday.
All governmental organizations, banks, schools and universities in southeastern Khuzestan province will be closed today, the Tasnim news agency reported.
An overnight, impromptu candlelight vigil in Ahvaz honored the dead and wounded. Among the dead was 4-year-old Mohammad Taha, who was captured by a photographer being carried away from the attack by a Guardsman in full dress uniform and sash. The photograph, showing the boy bloodied and helpless, shocked Iran.
GIULIANI'S REMARK
On the same day as the attack in Iran, Trump's lawyer mounted a stage in New York to declare that the Iranian government would be toppled.
"I don't know when we're going to overthrow them. It could be in a few days, months or a couple of years, but it's going to happen," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Saturday. "They are going to be overthrown. The people of Iran obviously have had enough."
For Iran's Shiite theocracy, comments like these only fuel fears that America and its Gulf Arab allies are plotting to tear the Islamic Republic apart.
The Trump administration has said its actions aren't aimed at toppling Iran's government. But in the meantime, Giuliani has continued speaking before meetings of an exiled Iranian opposition group. And before John Bolton was appointed national security adviser earlier this year, he gave impassioned speeches calling for regime change.
"The declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs' regime in Tehran," Bolton told Iranian exiles in July 2017. "The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself."
Information for this article was contributed by Nasser Karimi, Jon Gambrell, Jari Tanner and Amir Vahdat of The Associated Press; and by Ladane Nasseri and Golnar Motevalli of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/24/2018