WASHINGTON - Iran's opposition in exile said Tuesday that the Islamic regime in Tehran had a hand in the twin bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Soona Samsami, the US representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told a news conference here that Iran's ambassador to Tanzania, Ali Saghaian, also served in the Iranian embassy in Argentina in 1994 during the bombing of a Jewish community center.

The opposition leader also identified Iran's ambassador in Kenya and the cultural attaché as terrorist agents for the Islamic regime and that these were recalled along with the two diplomats from Tanzania back to Tehran two weeks before the bombings.

"The very fact that the Iranian regime has assigned four of its top agents -- two ambassadors and two cultural attaches with long records of involvement in terrorist activities to Kenya and Tanzania -- indicates that a plan was in the works," said Samsami.

Resistance Group Claims Tehran Behind Embassy Bombs, Dow Jones News, August 11

WASHINGTON - An Iranian opposition group Tuesday alleged that Iran's government is behind the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last week.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group of dissident factions bent on toppling the Iranian government, presented what it called 'a considerable body of evidence' associating Iran's government with the almost simultaneous explosions that killed more than 150 people in the two countries.

Soona Samsami, the group's U.S. representative, listed several Iranian diplomats and representatives stationed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam who allegedly have terrorist credentials.

Chief among these officials was Ali Saghaian, Iran's Tanzanian ambassador, whom Samsami described as a 'diplomat-terrorist.'

Further, Samsami noted the Iranian government recalled four of its diplomats from Kenya and Tanzania and announced it would close its embassy in Tanzania.

As well, Samsami said some 60 Kenyan and Tanzanian theological students were recruited by Iran's World Center For Theological Sciences in Qum.

Taken together in the light of the bombing, these things cannot be taken as 'simply co-incidental,' she said.

Terror Born in Iran, The Washington Times, August 11

[Excerpts from an article by Arnold Beichmen, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution]

Iran is the country whose terrorist record is easiest to prove. And thanks to West European, Chinese, Russian and - let's face it - U.S. business dealings with Iran, the mullahs have the tools - including launchable missiles - with which to carry out their sanguinary ambitions.

Let me cite the name and record of Ali Saghaian, Iran's ambassador to Tanzania. Mr. Saghaian's diplomatic post earlier was in Argentina when the seven-story Jewish center in Buenos Aires was car-bombed on the mid-morning of July 18, 1994. Ninety-six people were killed and dozens wounded. Nearby apartment houses were seriously damaged leaving hundreds of people homeless. Two years earlier in March 1992, a car bomb destroyed the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital leaving at least 28 people dead. To this day not a single arrest has been made.

At the time of bombing, Israeli intelligence officials told Argentine intelligence that the Lebanon-based Partisans of God had claimed responsibility for the bombing. That organization has been linked to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Ambassador Saghaian's diplomatic record begins in 1988 when he was sent to Karachi, Pakistan, as Iran's Consul General. In 1991 he returned to Iran and was reassigned to the embassy in Buenos Aires. For a while he was acting-ambassador. On Feb. 3, 1996 he returned to Argentina with passport number 5054 pretending to be a businessman and remained in Argentina until April 19, 1996.

Let me now cite the name of Mohammad Javad Taskhiri, presently Iran's "cultural attaché" in Tanzania. In 1993, as cultural attaché in Amman, Jordan he was accused by Jordan of inciting anti-government fundamentalist groups and expelled from that country. His brother, Mohammad Ali Taskhiri is head of an organization called "Islamic culture and communications," which trains Iranians in fundamentalist doctrines and then sends its graduates abroad to carry out the orders of Iran's Supreme National Security Councils.

Iran's power is such that Arab countries especially Saudi Arabia have been intimidated into refusing to cooperate with American intelligence agencies like the FBI in terrorist investigations.
 
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