ISIS attack in Iran leaves 15 people dead

 

Bloodstains at the site of the attack in Iran. AP. 

An attack against a shrine in Iran has left 15 people dead and many more wounded with ISIS claiming responsibility. AP. The attack does not appear to be related to the major protest movement in Iran. The attack involved three gunman, two of which have been captured with the third still on the run as of this writing. Iran claims the attackers were foreign nationals. Islamist attacks in Iran are rare but have happened before and Sunni ISIS has a presence in the Shiite dominated country.

My Comment:

This post will be pretty short as I am low on time, but I thought a major terror attack deserved some coverage. The story is largely being overshadowed by other stories and even the AP article only had a few paragraphs about the attack itself and spent most of the article talking about the current wave of protests rocking Iran. 

I generally think ISIS making a comeback is more important than the protests since they will eventually be put down. Iran is very good at dealing with civil disorder, and we have seen waves of protests there put down many, many times before. Iran's government is not going to fall, but the media would sure like it if they did. 

This attack is a fairly disturbing development. It shows that ISIS has regained the ability to launch terror attacks against foreign targets after mostly being destroyed during the Trump presidency. Does this mean they are making a comeback? It's very possible. ISIS is so low on everyone's priority list right now that they could indeed have reorganized and recovered. 

This wasn't a simple attack either. Iran is claiming the attackers were foreigners so ISIS had to be organized enough to smuggle these people in and then find weapons for them, which they could have smuggled in as well or had the attackers buy on the local black market. This was not a "lone wolf" style attack, it was a full scale terror attack with a large amount of training and expenses. It's not something an unorganized terror group could pull off. 

The attack is just another example of ISIS attacking Shiites. The Sunni ISIS group considers Shiite Islam to be a heresy and have spent quite a few attacks on Shiite targets. The terror group will likely gain some more recruits and funding from this attack. There are a lot of people in the Sunni Muslim world that hate Shiite Muslims and will celebrate this attack.