Assailants in the Indian capital New Delhi on Monday attached an explosive device to an Israeli Embassy van which carried the wife of the Jewish state's defense attaché in India. Several people were injured in the blast. The woman was injured by shrapnel and taken to hospital for emergency treatment. She had been on her way to pick up children from a nearby school. Another car bombing in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, against Israeli diplomats was thwarted at the last moment. The bomb was discovered by a local employee and defused by police before it could explode.
Israeli officials said they had evidence that Iran and its proxies were behind both attacks.
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder condemned the attacks against the Israeli diplomats, which he called “acts of terrorism against peaceful diplomats and innocent civilians”. Lauder said the bombs showed that “the threats recently issued by Iran and its proxies in the Middle East are real and present.” Lauder said the attacks showed the true face of the Iranian regime and its proxy in Lebanon, the Shiite Hezbollah movement.
The WJC president added: “The world should take note: Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism worldwide. Tehran is behind attempts to quash the protests in Syria, it was behind the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center and of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, and it continues to deploy the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah in Lebanon to spread terror around the Globe.” WJC Secretary General Dan Diker pointed out: “The time has come for the international community to take decisive action against this murderous regime. Iran is the key factor fomenting instability and violence in the Middle East and around the world.”
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also blamed Iran, denouncing the regime in Tehran as the “largest exporter of terrorism in the world”. He also said Israel had thwarted attacks in recent months in Azerbaijan and Thailand and other countries. "In all those cases, the elements behind these attacks were Iran and its protegé, Hezbollah," he said, vowing to "act with a strong hand against international terror."
Iranian officials rejected the accusation as unfounded. "This accusation is within the Zionist regime's psychological war against Iran," the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying. "The Zionist regime, due to repeated crimes against humanity, is the main party accused of terrorist activities," he was quoted as saying.
