Iran vows revenge after more than 100 killed in blasts near tomb of former commander

Published

2 years ago

January 4, 2024

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Iran has vowed revenge after more than 100 people were killed in two explosions near the tomb of a general.

At the time of the explosions a ceremony was being held in the city of Kerman to mark the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top commander Qassem Soleimani.

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi said the attack was “heinous and inhumane”, while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed to get revenge.

According to state media, he said: “Cruel criminals […] must know that they will be strongly dealt with from now on and […] undoubtedly there will be a harsh response.”

Kerman’s mayor, Saeed Tabrizi, told Iran’s state-run ISNA news agency that the blasts took place about 10 minutes apart.

Local media reports suggest more than 140 people were injured.

Kerman’s deputy governor Rahman Jalali described the blasts as “terroristic attacks” – without elaborating on who could be behind them.

The United States has said it was not involved in the explosions in Iran in any way and has no reason to believe Israel was either.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon, has blamed Israel for the explosions and said those who died were “targeted”.

The Hezbollah leader also paid tribute to Soleimani and said: “Even in his tomb, he is living. In his martyrdom, his life has become stronger, more present.

“We see him in our rockets, in our homes, in the tears of the children.”

Soleimani, once Iran’s top military general, was assassinated in a US drone strike during a visit to Iraq to meet then prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

Israel-Gaza latest: Warning ‘entire Middle East might end up in flames’

Iran’s Tasnim news agency, quoting two unnamed sources, reported that “two bags carrying bombs went off” at the site and that the “perpetrators … of this incident apparently detonated the bombs by remote control”.

Tehran has enemies both internally and externally.

Israel has in the past been accused of carrying out drone strikes on Iranian military facilities, while Sunni extremist groups such as Islamic State have carried out bombings, often on civilian targets, in the majority Shia nation.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s blasts.

It comes a day after Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh al Arouri died in an explosion in Beirut.

The drone strike that killed Soleimani caused a major diplomatic crisis between the US and Iran, leading to retaliatory rocket strikes against US military sites in Iraq and pushing the two countries to the brink of war.

More than a million people took to the streets for Soleimani’s funeral – leading to a stampede in which 56 mourners were killed.

Having served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Soleimani became one of the country’s top commanders.

A national hero to supporters of Iran’s theocratic regime, he was often touted as the country’s second most powerful figure, behind only Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

He was the commander of the Quds Force – a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Cops responsible for spying and military operations outside of Iran.

The group was deemed a terrorist organisation by the US.

They claimed Soleimani oversaw Quds Force officers as they tried and failed to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US Adel al Jubeir at the upscale Cafe Milano in Washington in 2011.

Soleimani was also regarded as the mastermind of Iran’s military operations in Iraq and Syria and influential in the development of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – categorised as the “Axis of Evil” by Western officials – involving Iran and Iranian-backed militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza.

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.