On Monday at 8:45 am, according to the AFP, a kamikaze in a car made his charge explode beside a bus of Iranian pilgrims. Actually, such as this photo confirms it, a car bomb which was parked close to one of the doors of Karabala Shiite city exploded into the passage of a bus transporting 28 Iranians from Bushehr region who where coming back from a pilgrimage in Syria with the guards in charge of their bus security. The explosion killed 4 pilgrims and two guards and it wounded much seriously the other passengers as well as by-passers. This represents 42 people.
© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG
At around 1 pm, another car bomb exploded in the ancient city of Nadjaf. It targeted another bus transporting Iranian pilgrims. This second strike killed 8 people (among them 6 Iranians) and wounded 16 other Iranian pilgrims.

At around 7:25 pm, a third car bomb exploded in a bustling suburb of the Shiite city of Bassora. It killed 10 people and wounded 30 others. During this bloody day, a fourth bomb exploded beside a grocery in Khales, the Shiite suburb of the city of Baquba. It killed one person and wounded three others.

One week ago, we counted 62 deaths and 285 wounded people. This time, there were 29 deaths and 90 wounded people but half of them were Iranians. Such as it was the case on previous times, the blasts were carried out with car bombs and not by kamikaze. They were claimed by the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda in reply to the Iranian interference in Iraq.

However, Al Qaeda is the armed section of the Muslim Brotherhood who is the historical allies of Iranian Islamists. Since their association in the 40’s, the mullahs and the Muslim Brotherhood have advocated for Islam unity and support each other. Thus the Muslim Brotherhood financed the activities of Khomeini and of his supporters. In return, the latter supported immediately the Hamas which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Idem, the mullahs helped Al Qaeda since its creation and in return, it carried out huge strikes against Americans such as the explosion of Khobar towers, the attack against the oil-tanker Limburg or against the USS Cole. One of the most recent examples of such collaboration was the creation by Tehran of this Iraqi Al Qaeda with which the authors of blasts identify themselves.

As long as such claims were false – or roughly false due to the mention of nationalist motive which is incompatible with the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood -, Tehran identified quite easily some American attempt of manipulation aimed at inducing a war against Sunnite and Shiite and alienate it from the Arab street which is its best ally. In order to avoid this, after the first wave of attacks on the 2nd November, Tehran refrained from intervening directly and asked to Moqtada Sadr to condemn the attacks and refer to fundamentalists hostile to Islam unity. Then it avoided implying itself in this game but it managed to preach the doctrine which is its strength. Additionally it refrained from criticizing Al Qaeda and from revealing the links which need to remain secret for the implementation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s projects.

In our analysis about the matter , we highlighted the subtlety of such reaction as well as the necessity for Washington to intensify its strikes in order to urge the mullahs to take stand and start the game. Such forecast appears to be right but Washington didn’t make the choice of quantity (notably with a strike on the Iranian ground via the Jundallah) but of quality by aiming Iranian targets in Iraq in order to take the mullahs by surprise and make them in the midst of it all at 8:45 am !

This appeared as a failed surprise because Tehran didn’t express about the attacks except from the fact that it denied the version of the AFP regarding the first attack ; it specified that it was a car bomb and not a kamikaze and that it remained the fact of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Out of this specification, it didn’t comment further the news ; it even reduced the number of deaths to 3 instead of 4 [1]. Regarding the second attack, it forgot to specify the Iranian nationality of victims [2]. It closed the issue via two much emblematic gestures : first of all, the regime specified that “the bus was chartered by a non-certified organizer, that’s the reason why it became unfortunately victim of the violence that prevails in Iraq (since the American occupation)”. Then through the Minister of Transport, it told about “the possibility that it will forbid this kind of circuit if other attacks happen” ; this is a certain way of expressing its indifference in order to show that it would never involve in the escalation Washington wishes !

The mullahs answer makes us notice two things. First of all, from a formal point of view, the overall behaviour adopted by the mullahs recalls Washington’s sidestepping when it was faced with the provocations made by Tehran in order to involve it in an escalation that was supposed to force it to capitulate and avoid a new war. It seems that Tehran scored a new point but it is necessary to specify that Washington sidestepped some tricky bluff while Tehran has just sidestepped true deadly strikes. It can’t go on sidestepping indefinitely. We may assess that it won a set but it didn’t win the game and the match : strikes will continue until it surrenders.

The second thing we may notice is the content of its answer : if we consider the proportional aspect, Tehran displayed less political commitment in the issue of Iranian targets than in the issue of Arab ones. It thus confirmed that it pays no interest to Iranian public opinion but it has more concern of the reactions of the Arab street. Indeed, if Washington decided to go on with strikes in order to disturb further the mullahs, it would have to concentrate its terrorist harassment on Arab Shiite target in Iraq and even in other countries of the region…

We have no other choice but to deplore such evolution with unforeseeable consequences all the more that Washington acted in order to save a theoretical project of instrumentation of Islam. This project has failed from its start because it didn’t take into account the existence of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nowadays, if Washington managed to make the mullahs surrender so to manage again the Islamic Republic, those salon Islamists who already failed in 1979 would fail again because they wouldn’t be able to order Jihad without the Muslim Brotherhood’s approval. Washington would rather help indirectly the Muslim Brotherhood. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG
The french version of this article :
 Iran : Les mollahs restent zen dans l’oeil du cyclone !
 (10 NOVEMBRE 2010)