Iran Parliamentarians Chant ‘Death to America’ After Islamic State Attacks Tehran

Iranian parliamentarians appeared to blame the United States and Saudi Arabia for the deadly twin Ramadan terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State early Wednesday morning in Tehran, which claimed 12 lives and injured at least 42 others.

A combination of Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen stormed Iran’s parliament and an iconic shrine dedicated to the late founder of the Islamic Republic and father of the 1979 revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the attacks were a cowardly act and reportedly downplayed the tragedies as a “minor issue.” He said, “Iran is an active and effective pillar in the fight against terrorists, and they want to damage it.” After he finished speaking, his fellow parliamentarians stood up and began shouting, “Death to America,” while pumping their fists in their air.

Iran’s clerics and hardliners chant, “Death to America,” often during rallies and after Friday sermons. The death chant from Iran’s parliamentarians on Wednesday implied that they believed the United States was behind the attacks.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq News Agency. It is believed to be the first successful attack carried out by the jihadi group inside the Shiite state.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has long stated his belief that the United States created the Islamic State (which is referred to as Daesh in the Middle East).

In 2016, less than a year after the Iranian regime received a pallet of hundreds of millions of dollars, which coincided with the release of five American hostages, Khamenei tweeted from his English-language Twitter account that the United States created and is supporting the Islamic State in order to “defame true Islam” and promote Sunni Wahhabism.

In 2015, Khamenei again claimed that the United States created and is promoting the Islamic State out of its hatred for Islam. “The present US officials are against the principles of Islam and, unlike their statements, they are after fomenting differences among Muslims, and its example is creating terrorist groups like Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIS) and other groups that have been created through the funding of the US affiliates and their political aids; they (the American officials) have caused the recent tragedies in the Muslim world,” Khamenei reportedly said.

He added, “The Shiite or Sunni does not make any difference for the Americans; they are against any Muslim who wants to live in accordance with Islamic rules and make efforts to that end.”

Wednesday’s attack on Tehran was the first time the Sunni Islamic State carried out an assault in a Shiite-majority country. The incident ended after Iranian security guards and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) killed four of the Islamic State militants.

President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), Trita Parsi, who was instrumental in helping with the Iran nuclear deal – and who has advocated for the recognition of the Iranian regime’s legitimacy by the West – issued a statement demanding President Donald Trump stand alongside the Iranian regime following the attack:

We urge President Trump, members of the U.S. Congress and all nations around the world to condemn the attack in solidarity with the Iranian people without delay, as European officials have already done. Terrorism respects no borders, and we remind the Trump administration that Iranians held vigils for the American victims of terrorism after the September 11th attacks.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran’s (NCRI) President-elect Maryam Rajavi condemned the attack and stated:

ISIS’s conduct clearly benefits the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Khamenei, who wholeheartedly welcomes it as an opportunity to overcome his regime’s regional and international impasse and isolation. The founder and the number one state sponsor of terror is thus trying the switch the place of murderer and the victim and portray the central banker of terrorism as a victim.

She suggested that the uprooting of terrorism in the region can be accomplished in the following ways:

• The IRGC must be designated as a terrorist entity.
• The IRGC and paramilitary proxies of the Khamenei caliphate must be removed from Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
• The Organization of Islamic Cooperation must expel the mullahs’ regime and recognize the Iranian Resistance for ending religious fascism.

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.