Assaults on potent symbols of Iranian ideology, claimed by Isis, will stoke tensions with Saudi Arabia, Gulf states and Trump 
 
 Consequences of attacks in Tehran will be felt around the world 
 
 In targeting the Iranian parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the terrorists who went on a lethal rampage in Tehran on Wednesday chose the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution. 
 
 For ordinary Tehranis, comparatively safe in recent years from such outrages, the attacks are deeply shocking. 
 
 The apparently coordinated assaults have been blamed by Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Saudi Arabia and, whatever the truth of the allegation, they are likely to have a big political impact far beyond Iran, stoking tensions with the US, Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Muslim monarchies of the Gulf. 
 
 Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility – if true, it would mean the militant group has finally succeeded in importing its divisive brand of random terror into the home of its principal Shia Muslim adversary. 
 
 Iran: 12 dead as Islamic State claims attacks on parliament and shrine Read more 
 
 The mausoleum where Khomeini was laid to rest almost exactly 28 years ago, on 6 June 1989, is an enormous complex dominating the skyline south of Tehran. Its cavernous halls are visited by tens of thousands of Iranians each year, who treat it as a shrine. Unlike the fortress-like Majlis (parliament) building in the centre of the city, security is light. That will change now. 
 
 For Iranians, the attack on Khomeini’s tomb is the equivalent of somebody trying to blow up the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. If the Isis claim of responsibility proves truthful, this will be the first time the group has successfully struck in the heart of Iran, although it has reportedly tried several times in the recent past. 
 
 Isis is at war, ideologically and militarily, with Iranian forces and allies in Syria and Iraq. In a video released in March, it vowed to “conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before”. The jihadis claim that Iran’s clerical leaders, and their royal Persian predecessors, have persecuted Sunnis for centuries. 
 
 Isis has natural allies among militant groups in Iran’s restive south-eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, which has a large Sunni population. In 2010, Sunni extremists linked to the Jundallah network killed 39 people at a mosque in the province. Minority Kurdish groups and ethnic Arabs also have a history of small-scale attacks in the north-west and south-west respectively. 
 
 Wednesday’s atrocities will be set against the backdrop of the anticipated collapse of Isis’s self-declared caliphate, as Iranian-backed Iraqi and Syrian army forces, plus US and British-backed Kurdish militias, close in on its Mosul and Raqqa strongholds. 
 
 In response to this pressure, Isis has called on its followers to take the fight to its enemies wherever they live. Recent terror attacks in Manchester, Kabul, Baghdad, Marawi in the southern Philippines and London may fit this emerging pattern of displaced activity by Isis followers. 
 
 Conservative Iranian leaders and commentators will certainly follow the IRGC’s lead and discern the hand of Saudi Arabia – and, by association, that of the US president, Donald Trump – in Wednesday’s attacks. 
 
 Well-documented covert efforts by George W Bush’s administration in the 2000s to destabilise Iran by funding militant internal opposition groups are not forgotten in Tehran. Nor is unofficial, on-off American support for the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or People’s Mujahadin of Iran, a group formerly backed by Saddam Hussein that was responsible for numerous armed attacks inside Iran. 
 
 US officials scramble to limit Donald Trump's diplomatic damage over Qatar tweets Read more 
 
 The question now is whether Trump’s overt hostility is encouraging a repeat of past destabilisation efforts, directly or indirectly. Overturning the previous US president Barack Obama’s policy of limited engagement, Trump launched a blistering attack on Iran last month. Speaking during a visit to Riyadh, he demanded Iran’s international isolation, claiming Tehran was the world’s main exporter of “the fires of sectarian conflict and terror”. 
 
 His host, King Salman, accuses Iran of “spearheading global terrorism”. Egged on by Israel, Trump has threatened to tear up Obama’s landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. 
 
 He trumpeted a big arms deal with the Saudis. And this week he threw his support behind Riyadh’s diplomatic and commercial ostracism of Qatar, which almost alone among Gulf Arab states has tried to keep on good terms with Iran. This has led regional politicians to warn of imminent war. 
 
 Iran’s leaders reject Trump’s accusations out of hand. They say Riyadh is Isis’s biggest inspiration and supporter, and point out that Iran and the US are on the same side fighting the jihadis in Iraq. 
 
 Unlike the autocratic Gulf regimes, Iran also has a quasi-democratic political system, with an elected parliament and president, that confounds the “sponsor of terrorism” image. This awkward fact seems to enrage Trump, the Saudis and Isis in equal measure. ||||| U.S. President Trump speaks during an event announcing the Air Traffic Control Reform Initiative at the White House in Washington Thomson Reuters President Donald Trump released a statement Wednesday on the terrorist group ISIS' first attack in Iran, appearing to blame the country for "falling victim to the evil they promote." 
 
 Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault that Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia. ISIS claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building. 
 
 "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times," Trump said in the statement. "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." 
 
 The US has designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism. 
 
 Iran provides arms and funding to some terrorist groups, including the Shia group Hezbollah. Iran has also been expanding its influence throughout the Middle East and has aligned itself with embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been accused of war crimes as he fights to maintain control over his country. 
 
 Trump has taken a hard line on Iran and often condemns the deal the Obama administration cut with the country to curb its nuclear program. 
 
 The ISIS attacks there took place at a particularly charged time after Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups. 
 
 ISIS has regularly threatened Iran, one of the powers leading the fight against the militants' forces in neighboring Iraq and, beyond that, Syria. 
 
 Reuters contributed to this report. ||||| Police officers control the scene, around of shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, after an assault by several attackers in Tehran, just outside Tehran, Iran. 
 
 Armed militants, some apparently dressed as women and equipped with suicide vests, stormed the Parliament building in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday morning around 10:30 a.m. About a half-hour later, another group of attackers rushed the mausoleum of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The assailants went on a murderous spree, firing on people, holding hostages, and blowing themselves up with explosives. The twin terror attacks — rare in the tightly controlled Iran, with its elite security forces — left 12 people dead and more than 40 wounded. Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had arrested another “team” plotting a third attack, says Reuters. 
 
 An undercover Iranian policeman (L) holds a weapon outside the Iranian parliament in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017, during an attack on the complex. Photo: AFP/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 ISIS immediately claimed responsibility for the rampage, and released a graphic video that was allegedly filmed by one of the attackers. If confirmed, this attack would be the jihadist organization’s first in Iran, according to The Guardian. The terrorist group adheres to a bastardized version of Sunni Islam, and it considers Shiite Muslims — Iran’s majority religion — apostates. 
 
 Iran’s revolutionary guard, however, accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the attack. “This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president and the backward leaders who support terrorists,” a statement from the revolutionary guard read, indicating Trump and Saudi Arabia. The statement added that “the fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack,” an insinuation that Saudi Arabia is tied to the Sunni extremist group. 
 
 An Iranian policeman holds a weapon as he stands by a window at the Iranian parliament in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017, during an attack on the complex. Photo: AFP/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Iran’s accusation comes at a particularly tense time in the region. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-majority nations cut diplomatic ties with Qatar this week, over its alleged “embrace” of radical groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Yet Qatar’s recognition and willingness to work with Iran clearly factored into that decision to sever relations. President Trump, visiting the Saudi Arabian capital on his first foreign trip, made it clear that isolating Iran was a shared goal between the U.S. and its Sunni allies in the region. 
 
 The Saudi foreign minister denied that Saudi extremists were involved in the attack, but Wednesday’s attack adds fuel — bolstered by Trump’s pointed statements against Iran — to the volatile regional rivalry. As Reuters points out, it may also roil tensions within Iran between the more moderate forces — which claimed victory in the recent reelection of President Hassan Rouhani — and conservative hard-liners.
– The Islamic State may have claimed responsibility for Wednesday's twin terror attacks in Tehran that killed 12, but Iran has a different culprit in mind: regional rival Saudi Arabia. "This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists," says a statement from Iran's Revolutionary Guards, per Reuters. It acknowledges that ISIS was "involved," however, thus insinuating a link between ISIS and the Saudis, notes New York. A look at coverage: Potent symbols: The attackers hit not only the parliament building in Tehran but the mausoleum with the tomb of founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—"the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution," writes Simon Tisdall at the Guardian. For Iranians, this is "deeply shocking," the equivalent of someone attacking the Lincoln Memorial in the US. The attacks: Details on how the coordinated attacks unfolded are at the New York Times. A first: Assuming the ISIS claim is legit, this would be the first ISIS attack in Iran, but the militant group has wanted to strike there for years, explains a Q&A at PRI. ISIS is Sunni, while Iran is a Shia nation, and it's no small distinction: ISIS views Shiites as apostates. The backdrop: The New York Times notes the attacks come not only after Trump's trip (seen as emboldening the Saudis) but after the Saudi move to isolate Qatar, which it accuses of supporting terrorism and Iran. It all relates to the main issue: "Iran and Saudi Arabia are the leading nations on opposing sides of the Middle East split between Shiite and Sunni Islam." Morale boost: Given ISIS retreats in Iraq and Syria, the successful strikes in Iran will clearly be a big morale boost to the group, per an analysis at the BBC. As they lose their strongholds in those countries, they want followers to launch attacks elsewhere, and no target is bigger than Iran. Trump response: It was notably mixed. "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times," he said in a statement. But then added: "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." The US does indeed consider Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, notes Business Insider. Ominous threat: Just hours before the attacks, the Saudi foreign minister had said Iran should be punished for supporting groups such as al-Qaeda, per Al Arabiya English.