Iran Blames Mecca Blasts on U.S., Saudis

NICOSIA, Cyprus —  Iranian leaders Tuesday lashed out at the United States and Saudi Arabia, accusing them of complicity in two explosions that disrupted the Islamic pilgrimage at Mecca, where violence in recent years has been laid to Iranian fundamentalists.

The Monday night blasts “were no doubt carried out by U.S. agents to blame Iran,” Speaker of Parliament Hashemi Rafsanjani declared in an address to lawmakers in Tehran. Or, he added, “Maybe the Saudis themselves did it to free themselves of the pressure from true Muslims of the world for depriving Iran from participating in the hajj,” the annual pilgrimage to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

Iran, for the second consecutive year, is boycotting the hajj, protesting Saudi limitations on the number of pilgrims. A small number of Iranians living in Europe reportedly made the journey.

“Whoever committed this crime in Mecca, from wherever he may be, is condemned, and this crime will never be forgiven,” Rafsanjani was quoted by the official Iranian news agency as saying, in remarks designed to turn the finger away from Iran.

Saudi security officials said one person was killed and 16 others were wounded in the explosions, which occurred outside Mecca’s Grand Mosque about 10 p.m. Monday as worshipers were leaving the shrine, the holiest site in Islam.

A previously unknown group calling itself the “Angry Arab Generation” on Tuesday claimed responsibility. In a statement delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut, the group said: “We . . . consider that this is merely a warning to the pigs, rulers of the Arab peninsula.”

Tuesday morning, tens of thousands of the estimated 2 million Muslims taking part in this year’s pilgrimage returned to the mosque, streaming through its 30 entrances for the final day of worship there before the hajj culminates today. According to pilgrims reached by telephone in Mecca, Saudi troops ordered worshipers to enter wearing only the simple white garments required for the hajj, leaving personal belongings outside.

The fatal explosions punctuated a week of inflammatory accusations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Iran’s leaders adhere to different sects of Islam--the Saudis to the mainstream Sunni beliefs and the non-Arab Iranians to the smaller Shiite faction--and the two countries have long been religious rivals.

They fell further apart during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when the Saudis gave financial and political support to the Iraqis. The Saudi government formally broke relations with Tehran in April, 1988, accusing the Iranians of fomenting violence in past pilgrimages.

As this year’s hajj got under way, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd called for stiffened security, apparently concerned about further troubles with passions running high in Iran over the recent death of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iranian leaders resumed the condemnation, first voiced by Khomeini, of the Saudi royal house.

The cycle of violence at Mecca began in 1979, when armed Saudi fundamentalists, inspired by Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran just months earlier, seized the Grand Mosque and held out for two weeks before Saudi troops stormed the shrine. About 250 pilgrims, fundamentalists and troops were killed in the takeover and the military assault, and another 63 accused perpetrators were later beheaded.

In 1986, Saudi security officers arrested scores of Iranians at Mecca, accusing them of being members of the radical Revolutionary Guards and of smuggling in weapons and explosives. A year later, Iranian pilgrims staged riotous political protests in the holy city, which were put down by the Saudis at the cost of 402 lives, most of them Iranians.

In the wake of the violence, the Saudis last year imposed a quota on the number of pilgrims from each country--1,000 per 1 million population--that would have cut the Iranian contingent from 150,000 to fewer than 50,000. Tehran responded with its boycott.