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US denies it or Israel were behind Iran blast
At least 103 people died in southern Iran at the grave of Revolutionary Guards General Qasem Soleimani, as mourners gathered exactly four years after he was killed in a US drone strike.
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People injured in two explosions in quick succession that struck a crowd marking the anniversary of the 2020 killing of Guards general Qasem Soleimani, are helped outside a hospital in the southern Iranian city of Kerman on January 3, 2024. (AFP/Sare Tajalli)
T
he United States on Wednesday rejected any suggestion that it or ally Israel was behind deadly blasts in Iran and warned against further escalation after a suspected Israeli attack on a Hamas leader in Lebanon.
At least 103 people died in southern Iran at the grave of Revolutionary Guards General Qasem Soleimani, as mourners gathered exactly four years after he was killed in a US drone strike.
"The United States was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said of Wednesday's violence.
"We have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion," he said.
"We do express our sympathies to the victims and their loved ones who died in this horrific explosion," he said.
The twin blasts on the anniversary of Soleimani's assassination came one day after a suspected Israeli attack killed the number two leader of Hamas, Saleh al-Aruri, in the southern suburbs of Lebanon's capital Beirut that are a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
A US defense official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Israel carried out the strike.
Miller said that Aruri was a "brutal terrorist with civilian blood on his hands."
But he warned against further escalation in the region.
"It is in no one's interest -- not in the interest of any country in the region, not in the interest of any country in the world -- to see this conflict escalated any further than it already is," he said.
The United States, however, has resisted growing pressure to back a ceasefire in Gaza, saying that Israel has the right to defeat Hamas.
Hamas "still has a significant force posture inside Gaza," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Israel has "targeted and been successful against a range of leadership of Hamas, certainly at the brigade level and higher," Kirby said.
"Remember, these guys are organized like a military. It's not just some ragtag group of terrorists."
US officials declined to assess who carried out the attack in Iran.
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi has canceled his planned visit to Turkey on Jan. 4 after the blast, the state news agency IRNA reported.
"Following the terrorist attacks in Kerman that martyred many Iranians, the president has canceled his visit to Turkey ... this trip will take place in an appropriate time," Mohammad Jamshidi, political deputy at the president's office, told IRNA.
Soleimani, who headed an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards, was also a staunch enemy of the Islamic State group, a Sunni extremist movement which has carried out attacks in majority-Shiite Iran.
Soleimani was killed four years ago at the Baghdad airport in a strike ordered by then president Donald Trump following attacks on US forces in the country by Shiite militias linked to Iran.
Iran backs Hamas, the Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip.
Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel on October 7, killing around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
In response to the deadliest attack in its history, Israel launched a relentless offensive that has reduced vast swathes of Gaza to rubble and claimed over 22,300 lives, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
