Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization, issued a statement on Monday describing the bombing attack on a girls’ school in Kabul, Afghanistan, as part of a “plot by Americans” to bring “terrorism, war, and insecurity to Afghanistan.”
Saturday’s bombing in Kabul targeted young girls emerging from a school with multiple explosive devices, killing at least 85 and wounding over 150 others, according to local officials who struggled to identify the dead and tally up the carnage.
The school is located in a district of Kabul populated largely by a Shiite Muslim religious and ethnic minority called the Hazara, a group oppressed by the Taliban when they controlled Afghanistan targeted for murder by Islamic State terrorists. The Taliban, which has a history of using violence to suppress the education of women, denied responsibility for the attack after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accused them of perpetrating it.
The IRGC issued a feverish statement, quoted by Iran’s state-run PressTV on Monday, that claimed the United States is deliberately supporting “takfiri terrorism” in Afghanistan because it wants to intimidate the Kabul government into begging American troops to stay.
In the IRGC’s view, the entire process of American withdrawal is a theatrical performance, while in truth America is secretly shipping squads of terrorists to Afghanistan to unleash so much hell that Kabul becomes willing to pay any price to keep U.S. soldiers in his country.
The IRGC blamed the U.S. for causing chaos in Afghanistan by withdrawing its forces, but then said American withdrawal would “provide lasting security and peace” to the entire Middle East:
This grave crime is a plot by Americans, which is aimed at reviving Takfiri terrorism and bringing back war and insecurity to Afghanistan.
This horrific incident, under conditions when the Americans claim to be leaving Afghanistan, places blame on the White House more than ever for transferring Takfiri terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan and attracting the arms, financial and intellectual support of its regional allies to inculcate a sense of return of war and insecurity to Afghanistan if U.S. troops pull out of the country.
The terrorist regime of the United States and its allies must stop their vicious warmongering and hatred against the Islamic Ummah, especially the oppressed nation of Afghanistan. The world public opinion believes that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from West Asia will provide lasting security and peace to the Muslim nations in the region.
A “takfir” is a false Muslim who accuses true Muslims of apostasy. Shiite Iran frequently refers to the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State as “takfiri terrorists” because they are bad Muslims who falsely claim to be fighting in the name of true Islam. Sunni extremists like ISIS, in turn, accuse Iran and other Shiite groups of being takfiri under the same reasoning.
Iranian officials claim to see “takfiri terrorists” behind every conflict in the Muslim world. They frequently use the term to refer to ISIS, but sometimes they use it for other groups. For example, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed “takfiri terrorists” collaborated with Israeli operatives to stoke the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan last November. Other Iranian officials claimed these were Sunni extremist militia fighters recruited by Turkey and dispatched to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region to stir up trouble.
Zarif on Sunday attributed the Kabul school bombing to “the takfiri Daesh,” using another name for ISIS.
The U.S. State Department said on Monday there are “some indications” the Kabul school bombing was perpetrated by “ISIS and not the Taliban,” citing the Islamic State’s history of “similar attacks on Shia communities in Kabul in the past.”
