Terrorist Attack in Shiraz Leaves 15 Dead, Will Iran Turn into Another Syria?

A terrorist attack in Iran’s city of Shiraz left at least 15 people dead and more than 40 injured. Are some forces trying to make another Syria out of Iran?

It was early on this Wednesday evening that at least 15 people were killed and 40 others were injured following an attack in the Shah Cheragh Shrine, a holy spot located in Iran’s southern city of Shiraz.

According to the Iranian state news agency IRNA, although it was unclear who was behind the attack, the attackers acted as “Takfiri-Wahhabi terrorists”, a name usually referred to Sunni extremists such as Islamic State militants, or ISIS.

Other Iranian media outlets shed more light on the matter, with Nour news, affiliated with the Iranian state, reporting that the attackers were not Iranian nationals. Iran’s Fars News Agency also explained that one woman and two children were among those who were killed.

Will Iran become a scene for acts of terrorism?

It is worth noting that what happened today in Shiraz is not new for people living in this city of Iran.

In fact, it was back in April 2008 that in a similar terrorist act, a bomb planted in a mosque in Shiraz exploded and killed 14 people.

But what makes today’s attack different is that it comes amid the ongoing protests in Iran following the death of the Iranian young woman, Mahsa Amini allegedly killed by the country’s morality police for wearing an “improper hijab”.

The incident happened in mid-September and this Wednesday marked 40 days since Amini died, with thousands of people gathering in her hometown in the northwest of Iran to honor her death.

Since the onset of the protests, which turned into violent clashes between protestors and the police forces in some cases, Iranian officials have been condemning US and Israel for foreign intervention.

They have accused these countries of adding fuel to the fire of protests, especially by the use of media and even paying money to some inside Iran to riot in the streets.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for example, said early this October that “these riots and the insecurity were engineered by America and the occupying, false Zionist regime, as well as their paid agents, with the help of some traitorous Iranians abroad.”

He also continued that “the death of the young woman broke our hearts. But what is not normal is that some people, without proof or an investigation, have made the streets dangerous, burned the Koran, removed hijabs from veiled women, and set fire to mosques and cars”.

Similarly, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi accused the United States of resorting to a “policy of destabilization” against the Islamic Republic. “Following the failure of America in militarization and sanctions, Washington and its allies have resorted to the failed policy of destabilization,” Raisi said on October 12 at a summit in Kazakhstan, according to his office.

There is no doubt that Washington and Tel Aviv are the two main enemies of Tehran and the Islamic Republic also has a history of intense tensions with the two since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Israel, whose biggest concern has, for years, been Iran’s nuclear program, has committed several acts of terrorism against Iranian scientists with the clear and full support of the United States. In their latest acts of terror against Iranian elites, Israel assassinated Iranian top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2022.

Likewise, the US did the same on January 2020 to Iran’s top military commander Qasim Soleimani, who was assassinated by a US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport and by the direct order of US then-president Donald Trump.

With what happened this Wednesday in Shiraz while the protests are still ongoing in different cities of Iran, the question is whether Iran’s arc enemies are planning to extend their acts of terror against the Islamic Republic and whether they plan to make another Syria out of Iran. Time will tell.