The departure of four Iranian diplomats from Kenya and Tanzania shortly before the US embassies were bombed has raised suspicions of Iran's involvement in last week's twin terrorist attacks.
The ambassadors and their cultural attaches, who have been connected with terrorism elsewhere in the world, all left East Africa at about the same time.
The Iranian embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam confirmed the diplomats were not there, but were expected back shortly.
The likely involvement of Iran in the bomb attacks has been claimed by a prominent Iranian opposition group. The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCR), which has offices in Britain and the US, says that leading Iranian diplomats in East Africa are involved in terrorist activities.
The Iranian ambassador in Tanzania, Mr Ali Saghaian, is accused by the NCR of being "a diplomat terrorist". While serving in Argentina, he came under suspicion of involvement in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994. The NCR says that after he was appointed to Iran's foreign ministry 10 years ago, he was sent to Iran's mission in Pakistan and assigned to terrorist activities.
The Iranian clerical regime's cultural attache in Tanzania, Mr Mohammad-Javad Taskhiri, was expelled from Jordan before being sent to Africa. The NCR says his expulsion was prompted by his "fundamentalist and terrorist activities".
Mr Kazem Tabatabai, Iran's ambassador to Kenya, stands accused by the NCR of having organised terrorist attacks while serving in his country's embassy in Iraq. His right-hand man, the cultural attache, Mr Ahmad Dargahi, is named by the NCR as another "diplomat-terrorist".
An NCR spokesman says that these four diplomats are the only ones to have been called home from foreign posts by Tehran. "The issue of Iran has come up", a US embassy spokesman in Nairobi confirmed to The Irish Times. "Iran is on the list of four or five main suspects".
While President Mohammed Khatami of Iran has been trying to improve relations with Washington, hardliners led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remain virulently anti-US and are locked in a power struggle with the president.
So far, only one organisation, a previously unknown group calling itself the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places, has claimed responsibility for the two blasts. The sophisticated nature of Friday's attacks has led terrorism experts to conclude that a government almost certainly master minded them.
The FBI and the Tanzanian police are questioning a number of foreign nationals in connection with the Dar es Salaam bombing which killed 10 Africans. According to an Israeli newspaper, US officials were warned that the US embassy in Kenya might be the target of a bombing attack. Ha'aretz newspaper reported yesterday that Israel had advised that the warning from an unnamed intelligence source should be treated with scepticism.
Sources in the US report that US intelligence officials are in Albania to investigate a possible Middle East link with the bombings. There has been speculation that the attacks were in retaliation for the US role in the arrest in June of four suspected Islamic militants in Albania.
The four Egyptian suspects are understood to work for Mr Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian expatriate now living in Afghanistan, known as a key sponsor of several Islamic militant groups. Western security experts believe he may have formed an alliance with an Egyptian-based militant organisation which before the embassy bombings had threatened to avenge the raids in Albania.