The Ansar Al-Furqan group, known for its opposition to the Iranian regime, claimed responsibility for the attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards headquarters in the southeastern port city of Chabahar on Thursday.
It confirmed that it targeted the IRGC in the city where India was developing a port to compete with Pakistan’s Gwadar Port that is being developed by Chinese companies.
In a statement Friday, Ansar Al-Furqan said that its members used a booby-trapped Nissan type van to target a military headquarters in Chabahar.
The vehicle was detonated at the entrance of the facility after the driver failed to breach the security measures taken by the IRGC.
The Guards had upped their security after coming under repeated attacks by the Jaish al-Adl group.
Tehran said that two officers were killed and 41 people were wounded in the attack. Ten are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, Iranian figures living outside the country refuted government claims that women and children were present at the site of the bombing, saying that the target was a military base.
It said that the government made such allegations to rally the people’s support after they had grown disgruntled by its security, economic and political policies.
The IRGC had blamed regional powers of being behind the bombing in an attempt to avoid acknowledging the existence of groups that are opposed to the regime within Iranian territory.
Dr. Nour Jomaa, who has Baloch roots, said that the operation reflects the anger harbored by the minority against the government.
He explained that Tehran had expelled thousands of Baloch families from Chabahar and brought in Persian ones instead in an effort to alter the demographics of the area and impose its complete control over it.
He revealed that anti-regime Baloch movements have recently intensified their operations against Tehran in an attempt to deter it from carrying out its plan to expel and marginalize the Baloch from their ancestral regions.
Moreover, Jomaa said that Iranian authorities were naturalizing Shiite Afghan fighters in the city as a reward for their fighting in Syria and Iraq and for executing Tehran’s policies in Afghanistan.
