TEHRAN, Oct 20, (Agencies): Iran’s military accused the United States and Israel of terrorism as it held a funeral on Tuesday for high-ranking commanders killed in the deadliest attack in the Islamic Republic since the 1980s. Throngs of uniformed mourners carried the flag-draped coffins of the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces, General Nourali Shoushtari, and other officers blown up by a suicide bomber in volatile southeastern Iran on Sunday. Fifteen Guards members were among the 42 people killed, including six senior commanders, Iranian media reported. Tribal chiefs and other civilians also died. “The martyrdom of commander Shoushtari added a black page to the US and Israeli terrorist file,” said armed forces head Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, quoted by IRNA news agency. A Sunni rebel group, Jundollah (God’s soldiers), has claimed responsibility for the attack in the impoverished province of Sistan-Baluchestan bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran, mainly Shi’ite Muslim, says Jundollah is backed by the United States and Britain and has suggested it also has ties with majority Sunni Pakistan. London, Washington and Islamabad have denied involvement. Tehran has often accused its Western foes of seeking to destabilise sensitive border areas.

The head of Sistan-Baluchestan’s judiciary, Ebrahim Hamidi, said the suicide bomber had been identified and that he was from the province. “The elements behind the terrorist attack will be arrested soon,” Fars News Agency quoted him as saying.
Iran’s state Press TV said three people had been detained over the bombing, but did not give details.
Sunday’s attack, the deadliest such incident in Iran since its 1980-88 war with Iraq, took place a day before talks started between Iranian and Western officials in Vienna aimed at allaying concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Thousands of people, mostly military men, attended the funeral ceremony at a Guards base in Tehran, holding pictures of the victims and of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Khamenei, we are ready for martyrdom,” one banner read.
The attack highlighted deepening instability in Iran’s southeast. Many minority Sunnis live in the desert area, which has seen an increase in bombings and clashes between security forces, ethnic Baluch Sunni insurgents and drug traffickers.
Qasem Soleimani, who heads the Guards’ elite Qods force, said it had made it more determined to defend the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted a pro-US government.
“We are an organisation which is awaiting to become martyrs,” Soleimani said, repeating allegations that the aim of the suicide bombing was to stir sectarian strife.
The Revolutionary Guards, seen as fiercely loyal to Khamenei, handle security in border areas. Their power and resources have increased in recent years.

The force’s deputy commander-in-chief, Hossein Salami, said: “The terrorists behind this incident and the enemies of he Iranian nation, whoever they are and wherever they are in the world, the Guards will chase them and punish them.”
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the perpetrators were based in Pakistan and carried out cross-border raids.
“Members of this terrorist group regularly violate the border and launch attacks inside Iran,” he told a news conference, referring to Jundollah. “The hands of those behind the crimes in southeastern Iran must be cut.”
He said Iran and Pakistan would hold talks on how to resolve the issue, saying they shared a “border of friendship.”
Jundollah, which accuses the government of discrimination against Sunnis, has been blamed for many deadly incidents over the last few years. It reportedly claimed a bombing of a mosque in Sistan-Baluchestan last May which killed 25 people.

On one of its websites, Jundollah said Sunday’s attack was “a response to the continuous crimes of the Iranian regime against the defenceless and oppressed people of Baluchestan”.
Iran rejects allegations by Western rights groups that it discriminates against ethnic and religious minorities.
In a separate development on Tuesday, more than 100 Iranian lawmakers filed a complaint to the general prosecutor against opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi for “harming the image of the system” through his activities.
Mousavi lost June’s presidential election to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but says the vote was rigged. The opposition says more than 70 people were killed as Revolutionary Guards and Islamic militia quelled protests that erupted after the poll.

Pressure
Iran ramped up pressure on Pakistan on Tuesday, saying the group accused of carrying out a suicide bombing that killed top commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guards is based on its territory.
Islamabad strongly denied the allegations and said the attack was an attempt to “spoil ties” with Iran.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that members of the group accused of mounting Sunday’s attack in southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province — a hotbed of Sunni insurgency — regularly criss-cross the frontier with Pakistan.
“They cross into Iran illegally. They are based in Pakistan,” Mottaki said without naming the group directly. “The hands of those behind the crimes in southeast Iran must be cut.”
Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit dismissed allegations that Pakistan was being used by militants as a springboard to launch attacks inside Iran.
“There is no question given the excellent relations between us that Pakistani territory be allowed to be used for terrorist acts against Iran,” Basit told AFP.

“There are forces which are out to spoil our relations with Iran. But our ties are strong enough to counter these machinations,” he said.
Tehran and Islamabad have friendly relations and regularly participate in regional political and economic conferences, especially those aimed at stabilising neighbouring violence-wracked Afghanistan.
But Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heyder Moslehi demanded that Pakistan “clarify” its position over Jundallah (Soldiers of God), a shadowy rebel Sunni group led by militant Abdolmalek Rigi, which said it carried out the attack.
“According to the evidence, the Pakistan intelligence service is linked to the Rigi group and Pakistan has to clarify its position regarding the group,” IRNA news agency quoted Moslehi as saying.
A leading prosecutor, meanwhile, said three Iranians have been arrested over the attack that hit the heart of Iran’s security apparatus and that a man who accompanied the suicide bomber was being sought.

“Due to security reasons, I am not giving the details of their names, but these terrorists are Iranians,” Mohammad Marziah, prosecutor in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, told Fars news agency.
Officials said 42 people died in the blast in the town of Pisheen in Sistan-Baluchestan, while state television on Tuesday reported that 15 members of the Guards were among the dead — up from a previous figure of seven commanders killed.
The attack was the deadliest assault in recent years on Iran’s prestigious military force set up after the 1979 Islamic revolution to protect the regime from internal and external threats.
Guards deputy commander Brigadier General Hossein Salami warned that his forces would hit back hard.
“The Revolutionary Guards will certainly chase, punish and take the revenge of the blood of the martyrs spilled by the enemies and terrorists,” he said on Tuesday.

“From now there will be no safe haven for them anywhere in the world,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
Immediately after Sunday’s attack, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged that elements in Pakistan had played a role in the assault.
On Monday in a telephone call Ahmadinejad followed up by urging his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari to confront the rebels, saying the “presence of terrorist elements in Pakistan is not justifiable.”
The head of the Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, has demanded that the Pakistani authorities hand over Rigi.
However, the foreign ministry spokesman in Islamabad denied that Rigi is in the country.
“We don’t know the whereabouts of Rigi,” Basit said. “As Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, Rigi is not in Pakistan.”
Jundallah, in a statement posted on the Internet, said the aim of Sunday’s operation was to avenge “the wounds of the Baluch people which have been bleeding for years without end.”

Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province, which shares a border with both Iran and Afghanistan, is also rife with Islamist militancy, Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence and a regional Baluch insurgency.
Hundreds of people have died since Baluch rebels rose up in 2004 against Islamabad, demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s wealth of natural resources.
Assailants shot dead two policemen in southeastern Iran hot on the heels of a weekend bomb attack that killed 42 people including elite Revolutionary Guards commanders, a report said Tuesday.
“Two motorbike-riding policemen were shot dead while doing a routine patrol in a street in the city of Iranshahr by two unknown assailants who escaped,” police colonel Mohammad Arab told the Mehr news agency.
The news agency gave no further details of Monday’s ambush which happened in the same Sistan-Baluchestan province as Sunday’s suicide bombing.

Lawmakers
Iranian lawmakers on Tuesday demanded the prosecution of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi for challenging hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as a court convicted an Iranian-US scholar of spying.
Some 100 members of the conservative-dominated parliament complained to chief prosecutor Gholam Hossein Mohsen Ejeie that Mousavi had committed a “national crime” by alleging fraud in the June vote, state media reported.
“The crime committed by Mousavi is a national crime and he has violated the rights of the Iranian people,” the official IRNA news agency quoted one of the MPs, Hamid Rasaie, as saying.
The demand for Mousavi’s prosecution came a week after a similar call for legal action against Ahmadinejad’s other moderate challenger, former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi.
Rasaie said the letter of complaint handed to the prosecutor was accompanied by “concrete evidence against Mousavi.”

“We were hoping that Mousavi would change course and keep his distance from movements that follow the same line as our enemies but we have seen no change in his activities,” the MP said.
“His actions have harmed the reputation of the regime.”
Both Mousavi and Karroubi refused to drop their allegations of fraud in the June 12 election as the official results giving Ahmadinejad brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets in Iran’s worst unrest since the 1979 revolution.
The protests sparked a massive crackdown in which 36 people died, according to official figures, and 72, according to the opposition. A further 4,000 people were detained of whom some 140 have been put on trial.
In the latest judgement from one of the hearings, Iranian-US scholar Kian Tajbakhsh was sentenced to more than 12 years in jail after prosecutors told a Tehran revolutionary court that he was involved in “spying” and “acting against national security.”

Scholar
A court has sentenced Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, who was detained after Iran’s disputed June election, to more than 12 years in jail, the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.
“The only thing I can say is that (the jail sentence) was more than 12 years,” lawyer Houshang Azhari told IRNA. Azhari, who did not give further details, said the sentence would be appealed.
The verdict looked certain to anger the United States, which is seeking to engage the Islamic Republic in direct talks to resolve a long-running row over Tehran’s disputed nuclear ambitions.
Tajbakhsh was among more than 100 people detained after the presidential poll who were in the dock at a series of mass trials that got under way in August on charges of fomenting post-election street unrest.
Tajbakhsh was accused of espionage and acting against national security.

Detained
Iranian investigators are still questioning three American hikers detained in late July after straying across the border and their fate rests with judicial authorities, Iran’s foreign minister said Tuesday.
Manouchehr Mottaki gave no other details of the probe or a possible timeframe on the case. But his comments suggested that formal charges could still be possible against the Americans despite a recent pledge by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to request “maximum leniency” for them.
In a wide-ranging news conference, Mottaki also repeated accusations of a US role in the disappearance of an Iranian scientist in June while on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Mottaki said the United States “must be held accountable” for information on Shahram Amiri, but made no direct connection with the case of the American hikers.
In other comments, Mottaki increased pressure on Pakistan to crackdown on Sunni militants after Sunday’s suicide attack in the border region that killed 42 people, including top commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard. Iran’s state television on Tuesday raised the number of Guard members killed in the blast to 15.
The three Americans — Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal — were arrested after straying over the border during a hike in northern Iraq. They have been visited by Swiss diplomats, who oversee US interests in Iran.
Earlier this month, the hikers’ relatives presented a petition to Iran’s mission at the United Nations in New York asking for their release.