The hard-line Javan Daily, a newspaper close to the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, said the attacker stopped Capt. Mojtaba Shahid’s car Saturday evening in Bandar Lengeh in the province of Hormozgan before detonating his vest.
Shahid’s deputy, who was also in the car, has been hospitalized in critical condition, the paper reported, describing the attack as an act of terrorism.
The city, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of the capital Tehran, has no recent history of militancy.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but some local news outlets claimed Ansar al-Furqan, an Al-Qaeda-linked Sunni militant group, was behind it.
Iranian security forces arrested a person allegedly linked to a suicide blast that killed a police commander, state media reported on Sunday, after the rare attack in Hormozgan province.
The attack took place on Saturday in the southern coastal city of Bandar-i-Lengeh, Iranian media reported.
On Sunday the separatist group, Ansar al-Furqan, claimed credit for the attack, according to SITE Intelligence Group which quoted the Ansar al-Furqan Telegram channel.
The official IRNA news agency reported that “one person was arrested following the deadly terrorist attack.” It did not give further details including the suspect’s identity.
IRNA said the suicide blast also killed the attacker, whose identity “has not yet been accurately identified and investigations are ongoing”, the agency quoted Ehsan Kamarani, the deputy provincial governor, as saying.
He added that “the evidence shows that he was affiliated with takfiri groups”, terminology used by Iran to describe armed groups.
Ansar al-Furqan in 2018 claimed responsibility for driving an explosive-laden car into a police station in Chabahar, in Sistan-Balochistan province adjacent to Hormozgan. Two officers were killed.
Sistan-Baluchistan, an area long plagued by unrest, in October saw 10 police officers killed in what Iranian media called a “terrorist attack”.