Iran has refuted Indian Media’s reports of its involvement in the January 29 attack outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi. 

On March 8, a report in the Hindustan Times claimed that the Indian counterterrorism had concluded that the Iranian Quds force was behind the terror plot. 

“The counter-terror agencies are clear that the blast was part of the asymmetric warfare campaign being carried out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps against Israel,” the news story suggested.

The Iranian Embassy in New Delhi issued a press statement on Monday, offered a stern response to the “unfair onslaught and unsubstantiated defamatory accusations against Iran.” The press statement presented a five-point explanation of the Iranian position on the issue

The statement labeled the reports of Iranian involvement as “irresponsible comments” that will help the enemies of Iran–India relations in realizing their sinister ambitions. 

The embassy also stressed that Iran had nothing to gain from the January 29 attack given the damage it could do to India–Iran bilateral ties.

It also described Iran and its people as “flag-bearers of peace and security in the world,” and “on the forefront of fighting against terrorism, warmongering, and violence globally”. 

Iran blamed “enemies of Iran–India relations” for the attack and expressed its readiness to cooperate with India to uncover the said enemies. 

The Hindustan Times has also projected Iran as the perpetrator of the attack previously. Two days after the attack, the newspaper quoted a “senior official” as saying, “Deliberate efforts have been made to firewall the real perpetrators [sic] behind the terror incident with false flags and deniability built into the attack that obviously was carried out at the behest of Iran.”

In the aftermath of the track, the authorities also recovered a letter from the blast site that talked of avenging ‘martyred Iranians’. The names mentioned as ‘martyrs’ in the letter were General Qasem Soleimani who was killed in a US airstrike in January 2020 and the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

“This is a trailer. We can end your life, anytime, anywhere,” the letter read.