US-based group ringleader admits providing explosives for 2008 deadly bomb attack in Iran
Upon arrest by Iranian security forces, the ringleader of a US-based anti-Iran terrorist group admits providing explosives for a 2008 attack against a religious congregation center in southern Iran that killed 14 people.
“I was called before the bomb was about to be set off,” Jamshid Sharmahd, head of the Tondar (Thunder) outfit, said in footage provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network on Saturday.
“They were in a good position. They [just] needed explosives that we provided for them,” he added.
The attack that targeted Seyyed al-Shohada mosque in the city of Shiraz also wounded 215 others.
Sharmahd personally planned and directed the attack.
The footage also incorporated intercuts of his previous televised remarks, during which he is seen admitting to Tondar’s working alongside the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Do you know where is the FBI’s office, the same federal building, wherein we are present?” he is seen telling a member of the audience in one.
The Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced arresting Sharmahd earlier in the day in a statement, and notified that he had directed "armed operations and acts of sabotage" inside Iran from the US in the past.
According to the statement, the group had planned carrying out several high-profile and potentially hugely-deadly attacks across the Islamic Republic, but was frustrated in the attempts after intricate intelligence operations targeting the outfit. These included blowing up of Sivand Damn in Shiraz, detonating cyanide-laden bombs at Tehran International Book Fair, and carrying out explosions during mass gatherings at the Mausoleum of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini.
Also on Saturday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry held Washington liable for supporting Tandar as well as similar terrorist outfits and criminals that try to lead sabotage, armed, and terrorist operations from within the United States against the Iranian people.
The deadliest anti-Iran terrorist group that ironically receives the biggest share of its support from Washington is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO).
The US regime and its European allies have inexplicably taken the cult’s name out of their blacklists and have been lavishing political and monetary support on it, despite the MKO’s being responsible for slaying around 12,000 Iranians since the 1979 victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
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