Iranian security officials defused a bomb planted on a domestic passenger plane, officials said on Sunday, the latest incident of violence ahead of next month's presidential election. The incident occurred just two days after 25 people were killed in a powerful bomb attack on a mosque in Zahedan in southeastern Iran claimed by a shadowy Sunni rebel group."Security officials of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards acted well and the incident caused no casualties," Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation, told the state broadcaster.
A top security official blamed Iran's "enemies" for the plane bomb, saying they wanted to stoke tensions ahead of the June 12 presidential election. "The suspicious package and the details of the sabotage operation in the Tehran-Ahvaz Boeing is under investigation," Mohammad Hassan Kazemi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards aviation security operations, told the official IRNA news agency. "I do not confirm a link between this and the Zahedan operation," he said. "But we believe our enemies want to create a threatening environment before the presidential election and exploit the open space in the country and spark despair among people."