“June 7 Can Be Named Day of Solidarity against Terror”

Iranian parliamentarian Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh has suggested that June 7, the day when ISIS terrorists killed 17 people in twin attacks on Tehran, should be named as National Day of Solidarity against Terrorism.

Speaking at an open session of Parliament, the MP condemned the terror raids while expressing condolences on the martyrdom of a number of Iranian citizens in the terror incidents.

“It’s been years that ISIS has been savagely butchering men and women, old and young, Muslims and non-Muslims, and slaughtering members of all ethnic and religious groups as well as humans and humanity,” he said.

“In their latest inhumane move, they targeted Iranian people at the Imam Khomeini mausoleum and the Iranian Parliament,” said the MP.

He then presented a brief explanation on the genealogy of terrorism in Iran since 1979.

In the early years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, he said, terrorists affiliated with the MKO terror group sought to assassinate Iranian authorities, and several Iranian officials were martyred in the terrorist acts

However, the MP pointed out that some of their acts of terror failed such as the attempts on the lives of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Later on in the 1970s and 1980s, Hosseinzadeh added, terrorist groups mostly aimed to target and pressure religious democracy authorities in the country. They could not even tolerate huge turnouts in Iranian elections and, as a result, began to carry out acts of terror, added the MP.

The terrorist acts included the assassination of high-profile Iranian officials as well as the killing of ordinary citizens, he said.

“Terror groups couldn’t tolerate the 40-million-strong turnout in Iran’s 2017 elections either […] and targeted two very significant institutions,” the parliamentarian said.

He mentioned that victims of terror in Iran include people of different ethnic and religious groups as terrorists have been targeting them as “Iranians” and not as individuals belonging to a certain ethnic or religious group.

Accordingly, he criticized certain individuals for putting a religious and ethnic spin on the recent terror attacks in Tehran and seeking to link the terrorists with certain religious or ethnic communities.

The parliamentarian then called on security forces to seriously deal with those involved in suspicious and terrorist acts as well as those who seek to polarize the society and trigger sectarian rifts.