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LONDON (Reuters) - Irans Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they had killed the mastermind behind an attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz last month which left 25 people dead, nearly half of them members of the Guards.

A general view of the attack during the military parade in Ahvaz, Iran September 22, 2018. Tasnim News Agency/via REUTERS

The Guards said in a statement published on state media their forces had killed a man named Abu Zaha and four other militants in Diyala province in Iraq. One news website run by Irans state television said Abu Zaha was a member of Islamic State.

Both Islamic State and an Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement called the Ahwaz National Resistance, which seeks a separate state in Irans oil-rich Khuzestan province, have claimed responsibility for the Sept. 22 attack. Neither group has provided conclusive evidence to back up its claim.

On Oct. 1, Iran said it had killed several Islamic State leaders in eastern Syria in a missile strike and destroyed the militants supplies and infrastructure.

The Sunni Muslim Islamic State group, in decline in Iraq and Syria, considers the majority Shiite Muslims of Iran to be heretics.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said those responsible for the parade attack were paid by Sunni Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and that Iran will severely punish those behind the violence.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have denied involvement in the attack.

Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; editing by Andrew Roche

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Russia and the Syrian government warned the US in early September that they planned to carry out counterterrorism operations near a key US garrison in southeastern Syria known as al-Tanf, where several hundred Marines have been stationed since at least 2016.

But the US responded with a live-fire exercise, and the Russians backed down.

In fact, the al-Tanf garrison has long drawn the ire of Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus but all they've been able to do is complain about it.

The Russian state-owned media outlet Sputnik quoted Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem as saying late last month that the US was "gathering the remnants of the Islamic State at this base in order to later send them wage war on the Syrian army."

Late last year, Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov told Russia's Pravda that satellite and other surveillance data indicated "terrorist squads" were stationed at al-Tanf and that terrorists were "effectively training there."

Iran's Press TV cited Gerasimov's quote in an article published this past June titled "US forces training terrorists at 19 camps inside Syria: Russian expert."

Without any real evidence, US adversaries have lobbed many rhetorical attacks against the US forces accusing them of harboring or training terrorists at al-Tanf.

Damascus and Russian state-owned media even claimed in June that the US was preparing a "false flag" chemical attack at al-Tanf "identical to the kind that took place in Douma."

"The U.S. led Coalition is here to defeat ISIS, first and foremost, and that is the objective of the presence at al-Tanf," US Army Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told Business Insider in an email.

"No U.S. troops have trained ISIS and that is just incorrect and misinformation, it is truly amazing some people think that," Ryan said.

The US has trained Syrian rebels at al-Tanf, namely a group called Maghawir al Thawra. Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at Stratfor, told Business Insider the group was "fairly secular by regional standards and has been at the forefront of the fight against ISIS."

Lamrani further described the idea that the US is training the Islamic State or like-minded groups at al-Tanf as "certainly absurd."

"To the Russians and Iranians, almost any group fighting against the Syrian government can be labeled a terrorist group," Lamrani said.

So why do Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government care so much about this garrison?

"I'd say that the primary reasons why Iran cares about it so much is, again, it blocks the Baghdad-Damascus highway," Lamrani said. Tehran uses the highway to transport weapons to the Syrian capital of Damascus, where the government is based.

"The reason they want the land route is that it's easier to bring [weapons] across land in greater quantities, and the shipping route is very vulnerable to Israeli interception, and the air route is expensive and often gets hit by Israeli airstrikes," Lamrani added.

Moscow, on the other hand, is upset about al-Tanf, according to Lamrani, because "it's the last area in Syria where the United States is involved with rebels on the ground that are not Syrian Democratic Forces."

The Russians and the Syrian government have "open channels" with the SDF and want to negotiate not fight with them, Lamrani added.

But Moscow, Tehran, and the Syrian government's ire might go beyond just stymieing the flow of weapons to Damascus and training rebels.

"There's a history at that garrison at al-Tanf," Max Markusen, an associate director and associate fellow of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider.

"I think that the Syrian regime, the Russians and Iranians, would see it as a [symbolic] victory if the United States pulled out of there than just sort of tactical level objectives," Markusen said, adding that there's much resentment for the US having trained rebels at al-Tanf.

But they haven't sought to use force to expel US troops because "the costs of escalation are too high," Markusen said.

So they're relegated to discrediting the al-Tanf garrison.

Going forward, "we will continue to see an escalation of rhetoric," Markusen said, but "I don't think there's going to be a major outbreak of conflict."

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A US base in Syria is a huge thorn in Russia and Iran's side ...

Erin Cunningham

Middle East reporter covering Iran, Turkey, Syria and the wider region

ISTANBUL Iran on Monday launched missile strikes on what it said were Sunni Islamic extremist hideouts in eastern Syria, a move it portrayed as retaliation for a deadly terrorist attack on an Iranian military parade last month.

Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps said it fired six medium-range missiles into Syria from bases in western Iran at 2 a.m. local time, striking east of the Euphrates River and killing and wounding several militants. It said its combat drones then targeted the sites.

A statement on the Guards website described those killed as takfiri terrorists, a term it often uses to refer to the Islamic State. The militant group still holds pockets of territory in Syrias Deir al-Zour province, where U.S. troops are assisting local fighters to defeat the extremists.

The strikes against the Islamic State on Monday, however, came even as Iran had blamed local Arab separatists for last months attack in the southwestern city of Ahvaz. At a military parade Sept.22, gunmen killed at least two dozen people, including a 4-year-old boy. Iran identified the five perpetrators as residents of Ahvaz.

But both the Islamic State and a local separatist group claimed responsibility for the attack. Iran accused regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of supporting the local Arab nationalists, who have fought for autonomy from Irans mainly ethnic Persian population.

Irans show of strength Monday appeared to be more about sending a message to its adversaries in the region and abroad than targeting those responsible for the assault.

At least four of the missiles landed in the Hajin area of eastern Syria, where the Islamic State is still active, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Revolutionary Guard said the missiles traveled some 350 miles from Irans Kermanshah province to their targets in Syria. Iran, however, commands a number of loyal proxy forces in Syria that are stationed nearby.

The strikes also capped a week of Iranian diplomacy at the United Nations, where President Hassan Rouhani sought to rally European and other nations to oppose stepped-up U.S. efforts to target Iran.

According to Henry Rome, Iran associate at the Eurasia Group risk analysis firm, Rouhani did not want an Iranian retaliation to dominate conversations at the United Nations.

It is the second time in a month that Iran has fired medium-range ballistic missiles at militant groups in Syria and Iraq. Last month, Iran fired missiles at Kurdish militants based in Iraq.

Bijan Sabbagh contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK The European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said on Wednesday a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) under consideration to facilitate trade with Iran could be in place "before November."

4:04pm EDT

GENEVA Laughter during U.S. President Donald Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly was a sign of the United States' isolation, the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Wednesday, Fars News reported.

LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May lobbied for the release of detained British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe during a meeting on Tuesday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, May's office said.

GENEVA/LONDON An attack on a military parade in Iran is a blow to the image of its Revolutionary Guards, but the elite force could yet turn the bloodshed to its advantage, using public sympathy to bolster itself at the expense of President Hassan Rouhani.

GENEVA U.S. President Donald Trump should stop interfering in the Middle East if he wants the price of oil to stop rising, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani exchanged taunts at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday with Trump vowing more sanctions against Tehran and Rouhani suggesting his American counterpart suffers from a "weakness of intellect." |Video

UNITED NATIONS A senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official warned European powers on Tuesday that it was offering Iran a glimmer of hope by trying to keep trade flowing, but that ultimately they would fall behind the United States' tough approach on Tehran.

UNITED NATIONS White House national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday dismissed an EU plan for a special payments plan to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iranian oil sales and pressed the SWIFT global payments messaging system to rethink dealing with Tehran.

UNITED NATIONS Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday criticized Washington for its hostile policy toward his country and said the U.S. approach was doomed to failure.

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"The enemy is waiting for an opportunity, for a flaw, through which they can enter. Look at these events over the last few days. All those who are against the Islamic Republic -- those who have money, those who have the politics, those who have the weapons, those who have the intelligence -- they have all joined forces in order to create problems for the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution," he said, without naming any particular country.

The US ambassador to the United Nations said any assertions that the protests are designed by Iran's enemies are "complete nonsense," and that the US would ask Security Council members for an emergency session in New York and the Human Rights Council in Geneva to discuss the protests "in the days ahead."

The protests have become the biggest challenge to the Iranian government's authority since mass demonstrations in 2009. About 450 people have been arrested over the past three days, according to state media.

The rallies began Thursday over the country's stagnant economy and rising living costs, but they developed into a broader outcry against the government and intensified over the weekend. Many of the protesters are young Iranians tired of the lack of economic opportunity in the country.

Protesters hit the streets for a sixth straight day Tuesday. Small protests -- not as large as previous days -- appeared in pockets of the capital, Tehran, a CNN producer there reported.

Video on social media appeared to show police officers and demonstrators clashing Tuesday evening in the south-central city of Shiraz. In the video, people scatter through streets amid the sounds of yelling and honking car horns. CNN couldn't immediately independently verify the video's authenticity.

Of the nine people killed Monday, seven were protesters. Six of them died in the central city of Qahdarijan when demonstrators stormed a police station and attempted to take guns from authorities, state media reported. The seventh protester was killed in nearby Khomaini Shahr.

A police officer died in Najafabad after a protester shot at officers with a hunting rifle, according to state media. Three other officers were wounded. A member of the Basij, a pro-government militia, was also killed, in south Tehran.

Video images shared on social media from the central city of Tuyserkan on Sunday showed protesters throwing chairs, tables and other objects at riot police, forcing the outnumbered officers to retreat. Six protesters were shot dead in the unrest there, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

A man and his young son also died on Sunday when a fire truck hijacked by protesters ran them down on a street in western Iran's Dorud, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency. Twelve people were killed over the weekend.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday tried to downplay the significance of the protests, which have spread beyond the capital of Tehran to at least 18 cities, claiming that "This is nothing" compared to other outbreaks of unrest.

But authorities have nonetheless responded with mass arrests and by restricting the use of the social media apps Instagram and Telegram, used to organize the rallies.

The US State Department said it is encouraging tech companies to try to keep such sites accessible in Iran.

"The message: We want to encourage the protesters to continue to fight for what's right and to open up Iran," Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy Steve Goldstein said.

There also are now concerns that some protesters could face the death penalty.

Musa Ghazanfarabadi, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Court, said that some protest ringleaders could be charged with "muharabeh" -- taking up arms against the state -- and accused them of being connected with foreign intelligence agencies, the semi-official Tasnim news reports. The crime carries a maximum sentence of death.

The Association of Combatant Clerics -- an Iranian reformist group led b Khatami -- acknowledged that Iranians face "livelihood, economic, political, and social problems and difficulties" and said they have the right "to express and even shout their demands legally and through civil protests."

It also called on the government "to listen to the voice of the nation and pave the way for resolving the problems and meeting their rightful demands."

But it also accused the United States of encouraging the violence.

"The grudge-holding and sworn enemies of the nation of Iran, with the US at the top... came to support the rioters and their violent actions," a statement by the group read.

"The bitter events of recent days showed that opportunistic and trouble making elements pursue the dirty agenda of the enemies, by abusing the quiet gatherings and protests of the people, creating riots and insecurity, damaging public property, insulting religious and national values, and even killing innocent people."

The association, with Khatami at the helm, led protests in Iran after disputed election results in 2009.

Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted that Iran would not allow "infiltrators" to sabotage protests.

"Iran's security and stability depend on its own people, who -- unlike the peoples of of Trumps regional 'bffs' -- have the right to vote and to protest," Zarif tweeted. "These hard-earned rights will be protected, and infiltrators will not be allowed to sabotage them through violence and destruction."

Rouhani discussed the protests and terrorism in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a statement on the President's website, Rouhani told Macron that a terrorist group based in Paris is "provoking and persuading people to take violent actions in Iran."

"We expect the French government to take its legal responsibility to combat terrorism and violence," the website statement said.

Trump has repeatedly tweeted his support for the protesters in the past week, criticizing the Iranian government as repressive, "brutal and corrupt."

Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani accused the US, UK and Saudi Arabia of using hashtags and social media campaigns inside Iran to incite riots.

"Based on our analyses, around 27% of the new hashtags against Iran are generated by the Saudi government," Shamkhani said, according to state-run Press TV.

The UK has called on Iran to engage in a "meaningful debate" on the issues raised by protesters, Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said.

Trump faces a mid-January deadline when he must decide about renewing temporary waivers for US sanctions against Iran.

CNN's Eliza Mackintosh, Alanne Orjoux, Marilia Brocchetto, Roba Alhenawi, Tamara Qiblawi, Jennifer Hauser, Sarah Faidell, Sarah Sirgany, Deborah Bloom, Michelle Kosinski and Laura Koran contributed to this report.

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Iran protests: Supreme Leader blames nation's 'enemies' - CNN