Saturday, June 20, 2009

Suicide Bomber at Shrine - Government's Pretext?

A number of sites are reporting that there was a suicide bomber at the shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic, the former Supreme Leader Khomeini.

The strangest thing about this incident is that the first place it was reported was Iranian state run Press TV. Almost all other news coming out of Iran these days is coming out first on Twitter. In fact, many on Twitter are saying that the report appeared in state run media...before the actual incident took place.

In truth, we'll probably never know for sure just what the timing of the blast and the report are, so don't hold your breath. Nevertheless, the question is, who did this, and why?

First of all, who? There's probably a lot of options here. It could have been a protester, who was feeling very pro-West that morning, and very anti-government, and decided to attack a symbol of that government. Perhaps the statement is that he wants to see an end to the Islamic Republic, even if it means his own life. Perhaps he thought he would martyr himself in the cause of a revolution. To us in the West, while this sounds crazy, it nevertheless makes some sense. After all, Muslims commit suicide frequently in the Middle East in order to get their point across.

But how do the Iranians themselves analyze this incident? Many of them are saying that it was an act of the government. They think the government talked someone into this, probably telling him that he was saving the Islamic Republic by doing so. The reason? Pretext. You see, the government can blame this attack on the opposition, and then they can basically say to the people, "See, they're unpatriotic! They want to overthrow the Republic! They hate Khomeini!" It would be like trying to blow up Mt. Rushmore or the Washington Monument. Anyone who did such an act would obviously not be pro-American, right?

So the Iranians themselves think the government did it in order to have a pretext. A pretext for what? Blood.

Update: there may not have even been a bombing. From the Huffington Post: "From a reader: 'I'm watching state TV here in Dubai and they just did a report on the bombing at the mausoleum. There was NO DAMAGE. All they showed was a broken window saying the 'terrorists' luckily blew themselves up outside the building before doing any damage inside. The 'bombing' was clearly a fraud as there was NO DAMAGE done to the mausoleum other than a broken window they showed at the entrance of the building. It clearly looked like there was NO BOMBING, no explosion fragments or blood shown just one shattered window.'"

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