Iran border guard foiled bombing plot in Ramadan: Commander

Iranian police forces foiled a terrorist plot earlier this month targeting the country’s southeast, including Kerman province, says the commander of Iran’s border police.

Brigadier General Qassem Rezaei made the announcement Wednesday at a ceremony in the city of Kerman to honor an Iranian soldier killed during a mission against the plot devised by the Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group for the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The terrorists, who were carrying large amounts of explosives, had been “trained” and “intended to carry out a suicide mission in the southeast,” said the Iranian commander, adding that three terrorists were captured, two of whom were injured.

The terrorists could have brought about “100 large blasts” in the region that would have caused “great damage.”

The Iranian forces “received information about a terrorist group planning to enter the country,” Rezaei (seen below) said, adding that one of the guards spotted them upon entry through the border with Pakistan.

Rezaei quoted one of the captured terrorists as saying that if the plot had not been foiled, the terrorist mission could have been “influential in the outcome of negotiations” between Tehran and the world powers over its nuclear program.

Jaish-ul-Adl has already been engaged in such attacks as well as other criminal activities in recent years in Iran, mostly in the border province of Sistan and Baluchestan; however, this time they had aimed for Kerman, situated further west.

On February 6, 2014, the terror group abducted five Iranian border guards in the Jakigour region of Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan and took them to Pakistan.

On October 25, 2013, Jaish-ul-Adl killed 14 Iranian border guards and wounded six others in the border region near the city of Saravan in Sistan and Baluchestan.