ISIS, the Sunni terrorist organization has for the first time launched an attack on Iran. The Iranian Parliament standing in the middle of the city of Teheran and the mausoleum of religious leader Ayatollah Khumeini were the targets of suicide bombers. In all 12 persons are reported to have lost their lives and about 40 persons are wounded in the attack. The suicide bombers entered the premises of the Iranian Parliament and gunned down a guard. Thereafter, they blasted the bomb carried under their vests. Iranian guards shot dead four of the assailants who were perhaps dressed in female dress.
ISIS have, from day one, unleashed violence and mayhem against the Shia community whether in Iraq or in Kurdistan or Syria. Their animus against Iran is that Iran, the bastion of Shia faith, is covertly and overtly supporting the Shia regime of Syrian President Assad and providing arms and logistic support to the Shia fighters wherever they are engaged in a conflict in the Middle East. Rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, though on ethnic count, has always worn the mask of sectarianism or political antagonism. Both are oil producing countries in the region and both are enjoying strategic geographic location. The Persian Gulf is the main waterway wherefrom two-third entire oil consumed by the world passes. Naturally both have serious strategic interests in the Gulf. When Ayatollah Khumeini’s “export of Islamic revolution” began to gain popularity in the initial stages of Iranian revolution in 1979, Saudi Arabia prepared to counter it so that its supremacy in the Islamic world would not be obliterated by rising Islamic Iran. The rivalry between these two countries exacerbated and changed in trilateral rivalry when Iran and the US came to a compromise formula about Iran’s nuclear programme. The attack on Iranian Parliament and the killing of the people once again confirms that religious extremism, under whatever name, is the biggest enemy of contemporary mankind. Countries of the world having faith in peaceful coexistence among the people have to come together to fight this menace.
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