Communications intercepts collected by the United States confirmed that Islamic State’s (ISIS) Afghanistan-based branch carried out the twin bombings in Iran that killed nearly 100 people this week, two sources familiar with the intelligence told Reuters on Friday.
"The intelligence is clear-cut and indisputable," one source said.
That source and a second told Reuters the intelligence comprised communications intercepts, without providing further details. The collection of the intercepts has not been previously reported.
ISIS on Thursday claimed responsibility for the bombings which took place ion Wednesday, saying two operatives wearing explosive suicide belts staged the attack.
The statement, titled “And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them,” named the two bombers and said they targeted a gathering of “polytheists” near the grave of their “dead leader” Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who was eliminated in a US drone strike in Iraq in January of 2020.
The group, however, did not specify that its Afghanistan-based affiliate, known as ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), was responsible for the bombings in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman.
ISIS-K is the Afghan offshoot of ISIS, which originated in Iraq and Syria. In 2014, American intelligence listed ISIS-K as a danger even greater than Al-Qaeda.
“The US has pretty clear intel” that ISIS-K conducted the attack, the first source told Reuters.
The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment.
ISIS’ claim of responsibility came a day after a senior Biden administration official said on Wednesday that the two explosions in Iran looked like a "terrorist attack" of the kind ISIS has been responsible for in the past.
Meanwhile, the United States rejected any suggestion that it or Israel were behind the blasts in Iran.
"The United States was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
"We have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion. We do express our sympathies to the victims and their loved ones who died in this horrific explosion," added Miller.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)