‘Mastermind’ of terror attacks killed, Iran says

TEHRAN, Iran — In a cross-border strike, Iranian intelligence operatives hunted down and killed the “mastermind” of the terrorist attacks on two landmarks in Tehran last week, a top official said.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks at Iran’s Parliament building and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, which killed 17 people.

The Iranian official, Mahmoud Alavi, the intelligence minister, speaking on state television, described the man who was killed as “the mastermind and commander of the team” that carried out the assaults.

The suspect, whose name was not revealed, fled the country after the attacks, Alavi said, and was captured and killed with “the help of intelligence services of allied countries.”

While the minister did not identify the area where the operation took place, his operatives have concentrated their search on the region around the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran has long had a considerable intelligence presence there, dating to before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and the Iranians cooperate closely with the two dominant political parties that divide power in the Iraqi Kurdish region.

The man “was sent to hell by the Unknown Soldiers of the Imam of the Age,” Alavi said, using a nickname for his operatives.

Iranian investigations into the attack are increasingly focusing on a group of radicalized Iranian Kurds.

Of the five attackers, all of whom were killed, only one has been officially identified: Serias Sadeghi, an Iranian Kurd from the city of Paveh in the country’s west, near the Iraqi border, who was described as a known recruiter for the Islamic State. But security sources said they believed three of the other four attackers were also Iranian Kurds.

Sunni extremists have gained a foothold in Iran’s Kurdish areas during the past few years, according to a 2015 research paper by Iran’s Interior Ministry.