The Delhi Police has concluded that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) was behind the February 13, 2012 bomb attack on an Israeli diplomat, according to a report by the Times of India.
The Delhi Police investigation report states that the suspects began planning the attacks on Israeli diplomats in India and other countries in January 2011 with the help of a local Indian journalist named Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi, in apparent retaliation for the as-yet unsolved assassinations of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists. Kazmi, a veteran freelance journalist who worked part-time for Iran’s news agency IRNA, was the first person arrested in connection with the attack. The report revealed that Kazmi had established relations with the individuals – and by extension the IRGC – almost 10 years prior to the attacks, suggesting that the Iranian regime has established a significant covert network in India.
In the attack, Tali Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of the Defense Ministry’s representative to India, was injured when a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to the embassy car in which she was driving in.
The report identifies five IRGC members in the car bombing, and while Delhi Police passed the details on to Iran in the hopes of obtaining more information, Iran has thus far been uncooperative. Houshang Afshar Irani, the central suspect, was the motorcyclist who attached the bomb to Yehoshua-Koren’s car, and he stated on his tourist visa that his profession in Iran was in building construction.
Sedaghatzadeh Masoud was accused by the Delhi police of being the operational head of the cell, and of planning not only the Delhi attack but the thwarted attack of the same nature on the same day in Tbilisi, Georgia and the botched attack against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok the following day. His profession was listed as sales employee in a commercial company in Iran.
The other suspects are Syed Ali Mahdiansadr, Mohammad Reza Abolghasemi, and Ali Akbar Norouzishayan. The investigation concluded that the five suspects entered the country on tourist visas and left immediately after the attack.
The police report also found that the cell extended beyond the five IRGC members, to include an Iranian woman – identified as Leila Rohani – who is suspected of playing a supporting role in the attacks in Delhi, Tbilisi, and Bangkok. The police allege that Rohani assisted the IRGC cell in the Bangkok attack of February 14 by finding them an apartment, and absconded to Tehran before police could arrest her.
At the time, Israel blamed Iran for the “coordinated series of attacks.”