CNN Breaking: 2 hurt in blast at Ayatollah Khomeini's masoleum

[Dennis Donovan]

This is being reported on Press TV (Iranian state news media). CNN is monitoring the broadcast...

[JI7]

1. i find this suspicious , if they are making it up or did it themselves

to get sympathy for Khamenei's regime and try to make the protestors look bad.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Black ops

But whose goons?

[malaise]

16. Remember that historic mosque in Iraq

I smell Mosad/CIA.
This protest could not be sustained this long without outside money.
My guess - Cheney's CIA and Netanyahu.

[JI7]

17. Netanyahu wants Ahmadinejad to win so he could continue his anti Iran talk

[tekisui]

3. Al Jazeera reporting at least one dead in bomb blast.

[jefferson_dem]

4. Al Jazeera is confirming...and suspicious of the motive.

Live Feed - http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

[wordpix]

5. streets are empty except for police

[jefferson_dem]

10. Expert on AJ saying "official media" is widely distrusted and Iranian public will not believe this

is anything other than a manufactured event.

[underpants]

11. I smell a CIA-type operation

internal governmental operation to create chaos and depict the opposition as being the culprit.

[woo me with science]

6. Al-Jazeera calling it a suicide bomber. nt

[woo me with science]

8. Actually they are saying other media called it that, but

commentator calling it "highly unlikely" given the makeup of the parties involved.

[jefferson_dem]

7. Google Maps View of Khomenei Shrine - site of 'Explosion'

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=35.5492,51.3665&spn=0.01,0.01&t=m&q=35.5492,51.3665

[Life Long Dem]

9. Rumor.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

[GoesTo11]

12. The protesters are giving up the moral high ground

Instead of peaceful and working for unity, this is highly provocative and divisive. Wonder why they decided to go this route now. It's not as if the dead Khomeini can do anything and all this will do is rile up religious feelings against the reformers. How strange.

[JI7]

13. you assume this was done by protestors

if it was it was the wrong move. but i can see the regime being behind it .

[GoesTo11]

14. That it obviously benefits the regime and not the protesters is curious.

Wonder why the protesters would take an action that does absolutely nothing tactically or symbolically to help them, and only helps the entrenched regime by giving them their own "war on terror" story line. Maybe they are just crazy.

[JI7]

15. that's why i said it's possible the Regime is the one who is responsible

not the protestors.

[GoesTo11]

18. Would they do such a thing?

Khameini is probably putting his top investigators on the case right now. He has already been prescient - in yesterday's speech he warned of terror attacks.

[drm604]

20. Why they would do such a thing.

They would do it to make it appear that the protesters have attacked the shrine of an important religious leader and therefore have attacked Islam itself. The point would be to cause anger against the protesters amongst the more conservative religious elements of the population.

The fact that he warned about such attacks right before one occurred simply adds to my suspicions.

[drm604]

19. Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili says that many of the people will believe that it is

a government conspiracy, but that it is also possible that this was carried out by the People's Mujahidin of Iran or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a group which calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

So it's possible that the perpetrators were neither Mousavi supporters nor the government, but a third party.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009620132947283202.html

I tend to believe that this was a government act since the explosion was near the shrine rather than at the shrine and, from what I can tell, there was no damage to the shrine. If this was some kind of revolutionary statement against the Ayatollahs then why not blow up the shrine itself?

[Rhiannon12866]

21. WP LINK: Suicide bomber attacks Khomeini shrine in Iran

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi said on Saturday he was "ready for martyrdom" in leading protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic and brought warnings of bloodshed from Iran's Supreme Leader.

Mousavi also called for a national strike if he is arrested, a witness said. As darkness fell, rooftop cries of Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) sounded out across northern Tehran, an echo of tactics used in the 1979 Islamic revolution against the Shah.

In an act fraught with symbolic significance, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mausoleum of the father of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while unrest continued across Tehran in defiance of a ban on demonstrations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000256.html

On edit: More

Bomber killed at Khomeini shrine - Iran media

TEHRAN, June 20 (Reuters) - A bombing at the shrine of Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini killed the attacker and wounded three pilgrims on Saturday, state television channel Press TV said.

Quoting the official IRNA news agency, it said a "terrorist attack" had struck at Khomeini's mausoleum, on the south-west edge of the capital. Two other Iranian news agencies described the attack as a suicide bombing.

Press TV earlier said two people had been killed and eight injured in the bombing, which was likely to inflame anger among Iranians who revere the founder of the Islamic Republic.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSEVA057756