'Suicide blast' hits Tehran shrine

'Suicide blast' hits Tehran shrine

At least one person was reportedly killed in the blast near Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's shrine [File: EPA] At least one person has been killed after a suspected suicide bomber reportedly blew himself up near the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. Two other people were wounded in the explosion in Tehran, the Iranian capital, local news agencies reported on Saturday. "A terrorist detonated his explosive vest in the Imam Khomeini shrine ... [causing] damage in one section of it," Hossein Sajedinia, Iran's deputy police chief for operations, told the Mehr news agency. Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili, who recently returned from covering the Iranian presidential election, said that many people would believe the explosion was "a government conspiracy". "The official media is widely distrusted ... so irrespective of who really carried out that bombing, I am sure that the protesters on the street will feel that the government has simply engineered something to blame them for something else," he said. 'Forced confrontation' But he said that it was possible that the People's Mujahidin of Iran or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a group which calls for the overthrow of the Islamic republic, could have carried out the attack. In depth  Video: Iran supreme leader in 'power struggle'  Video: Iran's 'citizen journalists'  Video: Iran steps up net censorship  Video: Iranians go online to evade curbs  Video: The struggle for power  Video: Rival protests continue in Iran  Video: Iranians rally in Europe  Iran's Ayatollah under threat?  Mousavi sees election hopes dashed  Iran writer on poll result  Mousavi's letter to the people  Iran poll result 'harms US hopes'  West concerned by Iran fraud claims  What next for Iran?  The Iranian political system  Riz Khan: Iran's disputed election  Inside Story: Iran election recount  Inside Story: Iran's political future  Your media: submit your clips of the protests to Al Jazeera  "They have dwindled in number and they have certainly dwindled as far as credibility is concerned, but you can't write off the fact they may still have some capability," he said. MEK took part in the Islamic revolution in 1979 that brought Khomeini to power, but their ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, put it at odds with the revolutionary government. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris. It has previously targeted Iranian government officials and government facilities in Iran and abroad. Mehrdad Khonsari, a former Iranian diplomat, told Al Jazeera: "We have to wait and see who instigated that blast ... but the whole point is the regime has forced a situation whereby there is a confrontation.   "They have tried to intimidate the protesters from not coming and not embarking on the course which they have. That has apparently failed. So the question is, how much more can this situation escalate?   "If this blast has led to the death of a number of people, this will infuriate the masses and it will propel them to want to engage. This is how revolutions happen." The explosion took place as police fired tear gas and water cannon at thousands of protesters gathered in Tehran to protest over the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president. Foreign television crews are operating under severe restrictions in Iran and many non-Iranian journalists have been prohibited from working in the country.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies