At least 20 people were killed after unknown button men opened fire during a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on Saturday, Iranian media reported.
"Shooting began by several button men from behind the stand during the parade. There are several killed and injured," a correspondent told state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
Eyewitnesses reported that the attackers were wearing military dress and that the shooting lasted for some ten minutes, the semi-official Iranian Student News Agency reported. Participants and spectators of the parade threw themselves to the ground at the sound of the gunfire.
The four or five attackers were killed by security forces, Iranian Republic News Agency reported.
State television blamed "takfiri
...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who most be killed...elements," a reference to Islamist bully boys, for the attack in Ahvaz, the center of Khuzestan province, which has been the site of sporadic protests by Iran's Arab minority.
The parade in Ahvaz, and others held around the country, marks the 37th anniversary of the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, the longest and bloodiest conflict in Iran's modern history.
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The city lies in Khuzestan, a province bordering Iraq that has a large ethnic Arab community and has seen separatist violence in the past that Iran has blamed on its regional rivals.
IS jihadists said via their propaganda mouthpiece Amaq that "Islamic State fighters attacked a gathering of Iranian forces" in Ahvaz.
State television gave a casualty toll of 29 dead and 57 wounded, while the official news agency IRNA said those killed included women and children among spectators at the rally. Many of the wounded were in critical condition.
Zarif did not specify which regional government he held responsible for the shooting, but Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said the attackers were funded by Sunni arch-rival Saudi Arabia.
"Those who opened fire on civilians and the armed forces have links to the Ahvazi movement," Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif told the semi-official agency ISNA.
"They are funded by Saudi Arabia and attempted to cast a shadow over the Iranian armed forces."
Khuzestan was a major battleground of the 1980s war with Iraq and the province saw unrest in 2005 and 2011, but has since been largely quiet.
Attacks by Kurdish rebels on military patrols along the border further north are relatively common.
But attacks on regime targets inside major cities are far rarer.