Iran alleges U.S. link to deadly militant attack

Bullet cartridges bearing a U.S. insignia and English lettering were among the weaponry seized last week from Sunni militants suspected of killing 11 members of Shiite-dominated Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, Iranian officials said Sunday.

A photo of the cartridge box, along with an array of other ammunition, was published by Iranian newspapers and news agencies.

Iran did not provide access to the weapons and explosives, drawing skepticism from analysts, and there was no way of evaluating the claims independently. But Tehran is clearly worried that the U.S. is quietly helping Iranian opposition groups foment instability, even while the Bush administration is confronting Iran over its nuclear program and accusing it of arming Shiite militants in Iraq.

The Iranian allegations came a week after U.S. officials laid out what they said was evidence of Iranian-made weapons in Iraq. That evidence also was inconclusive, and Iran denied supplying arms to Iraqi combatants.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Marine Maj. Rebecca Goodrich-Hinton, said Sunday that officials had no comment about the allegations from Tehran.

Iranian officials in the southeastern region of Sistan-Baluchistan, where a bus carrying the Revolutionary Guard troops was struck Wednesday by explosives from a booby-trapped car, announced the accusations of U.S. and British involvement in the attack.

“Washington and London are facing serious challenges as their interests in the Middle East region have been endangered,” an unnamed local official, identified as the province’s political director, told the semiofficial Fars news agency. “Since the Islamic Republic is the main center of anti-U.S. struggles, they are seeking to trouble Iran through a series of challenges, including terrorist attacks and unrests.”

He said weapons used in the attack, which wounded 31 people, were made by the U.S. and Britain. “Moreover, the arrested terrorist agents have confessed that they have been trained by English-speaking people,” the official said.

In the last year, Iran has seen a wave of protests and bombings from non-Shiite minorities, especially Sunni Muslims living along the nation’s western border with Iraq and its eastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, where two bombings occurred last week.

Sunnis make up about 8% of Iran’s population and have long complained of repression and discrimination by the Shiite-dominated government. Though there are an estimated 1 million Sunnis in Tehran, the government has not allowed construction of a single Sunni mosque in the capital.

Three people were reportedly hanged in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan this month in connection with a series of deadly bombings last year. Seven others in the case were previously executed, reports say.

Ethnic Azeris and Kurds also have been increasingly militant in favor of greater autonomy, and the violence last week in Sistan-Baluchistan is the latest in a wave of unrest among ethnic Baluch on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border.

Responsibility for the bus bombing and an explosion the next day was claimed by the Sunni militant group Jundallah, or God’s Brigade, which has been blamed for previous attacks on Iranian troops in the region.

Stratfor, a Texas-based security and intelligence firm, said in a report Saturday that the attacks “fall in line with U.S. efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime.” It said a “covert intelligence war” between Iran and the U.S. is “well underway.”

But other analysts said a large amount of U.S. military equipment supplied to Iran in the years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution was still in use, and the existence of U.S.-manufactured ammunition did not prove American involvement.

The analysts said unrest in Iran was more likely a reflection of the ethnic nationalism that is creating conflict in multiethnic nations across the globe, including the former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia and Spain.

“We’re living in a period in history when multinational states break up. And why should Iran be the exception?” said Edward N. Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“I’d be very surprised if the level of violence by the Kurds and the Baluch doesn’t increase, or indeed if the Sunni Arabs in [Khuzestan] stop agitating. It’s a natural thing,” he said.

kim.murphy@latimes.com

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Times staff writer David Willman in Washington contributed to this report.