TEHRAN, Oct 12, (Agencies): An explosion at an Iranian military training base killed and injured several servicemen on Tuesday, the website of Iran’s English-language Press TV reported. The report did not make clear how many people were killed or injured but said the explosion, which occurred roughly three weeks after a deadly bomb blast at a military parade in northwestern Iran, was caused “by accident”. The explosion happened at a base in Khoramabad in western Iran, according to Iranian media. Press TV said firefighters and rescue teams were sent to the scene and the injured were rushed to hospital. The blast at the parade in late September, which killed 12 people and injured 80, occurred in the city of Mahabad. Iranian authorities blamed it on “anti-revolutionary” militants backed by foreign enemies. Days after that attack, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said they had killed about 30 people who were behind it. Analysts have said attacks could raise pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government has been plagued by political infighting and economic woes linked in part to foreign sanctions imposed due to Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.

No group claimed responsibility for the blast in Mahabad, which occurred during an annual ceremony for the Iranian armed forces to commemorate Iran’s 8-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. But several armed groups hostile to the establishment are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the northwest, Baluch militants in the southeast and some Arabs in the southwest. The Sunni Muslim Jundollah militant group, which Iran says has links to al-Qaeda, is the most active. it claimed a double suicide attack on July 15 which killed 28 people, including Revolutionary Guards. Last week, five Iranians, including four members of the security forces, were killed and nine injured when gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, the scene of frequent clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces. Iran’s leader issued a decree that paves the way for a state takeover of the country’s largest private university, in a crushing blow to the nation’s moderates.

The Islamic Azad University is the centre of power for former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatist and key supporter of Iran’s moderates. The institution, which was founded in 1982, was a major site for opposition protests against the 2009 disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which opponents say was fraudulent.
But on Monday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a decree declaring the university’s endowment — which keeps it financially independent — to be religiously illegitimate and therefore null and void.
The endowment, or vaqf in Farsi, was set up in 2009, shortly after the elections by the university board to keep the it independent in the face of the rising power of hard-liners in the ruling system.
The university, which has more than one 1.3 million students in over 350 branches nationwide, allowed opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi free access to its huge resources during his election campaign, allowing his voice to be heard all over Iran.

Ever since, Ahmadinejad and his extremist camp have intensified efforts to strip Rafsanjani of this multibillion dollar power house. The assets of the university are estimated to be around $250 billion.
The endowment was challenged by Ahmadinejad’s supporters and after the elections, the courts, parliament and various councils allied to different factions within the ruling system battled over the fate of the university.
Khamenei’s decision is a public humiliation of Rafsanjani and a huge boost to his archenemy Ahmadinejad and the president’s extremist supporters.
In his decree, Khamenei said he had tasked two delegations comprised of legal experts and scholars headed by one of his supporters with conducting an “in depth and comprehensive” study of the issue and the final result found the endowment to be illegitimate.

Germans
German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed on Tuesday that two foreign reporters detained in Iran for interviewing the son of a woman condemned to death by stoning are Germans and said she was seeking their release.
Merkel said on a visit to Bucharest that her government was following the situation closely “and the foreign ministry is doing everything in its power” to get the two freed.
The Iranian government said the pair, whose nationality it declined to specify, were arrested because they had links with “anti-revolutionary” networks abroad.
Iran’s judiciary said on Monday that the two were detained after meeting the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, whose sentence to death by stoning for adultery was shelved last month following a global outcry.
“The two had links with anti-revolutionary networks abroad ... an anti-revolutionary group based in Germany made the preparations for these two people to refer to Ms Mohammadi’s son,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a weekly news conference on Tuesday.
“Some sources said they are Germans,” he said.

Correspondents working for foreign media require official permission to travel outside Tehran or report on demonstrations and other unofficial political events.
“We are not sure if they are reporters because if you are a reporter you should have your press visa when you enter the country,” he said. “The two entered Iran with tourist visas.”
In another incident highlighting sensitivity to foreign media coverage, an accredited journalist for Spain’s El Pais newspaper was given two weeks to leave Iran on Monday.
The newspaper said the decision appeared to be linked to an interview Angeles Espinosa had conducted with the son of the late dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in July.
El Pais has also campaigned for the release of Ashtiani, whose sentence to stoning for adultery caused global outrage. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the case had been whipped up by hostile foreign media and refused to have her released.

Deadlock
Iran on Tuesday blamed European Union Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton for the deadlock over nuclear talks with world powers, urging her to be “more active” in pursuing the dialogue.
“Basically, it seems that the volume of Ms. Ashton’s activity is lower,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters, targeting Ashton for the stalemate in talks over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.
Ashton represents the six world powers — the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany — in negotiations with Iran.
Dialogue between Iran and the six powers has been stalled since October 2009, when the two groups last met in Geneva.
The negotiations aim to address international suspicions that Iran is seeking to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran considered late October or early November as an appropriate time for a resumption of the talks but a spokesman for Ashton said no date had been set.

“Mrs. Ashton is still ready to talk to Iran and is hopeful that this will be possible,” spokesman Darren Ennis told AFP in response to Mottaki’s remarks.
Mehmanparast directly blamed Ashton for the stalemate.
“If she is really eager for negotiations, she should be more active,” he insisted, adding that her predecessor Javier Solana was “more active.”
“We have announced our readiness for negotiations. But the other side ... is not really following up, or is not serious” about resuming the dialogue, he said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had declared a unilateral ban on talks until the middle of September after the Islamic republic was hit with new sanctions by UN Security Council on June 9.
Iranian officials have regularly insisted that during any talks Tehran will reiterate that its nuclear rights be recognised.