Iran announced on Tuesday that it had launched ballistic missile attacks on “terrorist” targets in Iraq and Syria. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the shots destroyed “a spy headquarters” attributed to Israel by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The strikes in Syria were carried out in “response” to “recent terrorist operations”, in particular the suicide attack in Kerman on January 3, claimed by ISIS.
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The Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced early Tuesday, January 16, that they had launched several salvos of ballistic missiles on “terrorist” targets in Iraq and Syria, killing at least “four civilians” in Iraqi Kurdistan according to local authorities in the autonomous region.
The strikes carried out by Iran on the night of Monday to Tuesday come in an already tense regional context, against a backdrop of war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian Hamas which raises fears of a regional conflagration between the allies of the two camps.
In Washington, an official denounced “a series of reckless and imprecise strikes”. “No American personnel or installations were targeted,” however, clarified Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council. For its part, the American State Department condemned the attacks carried out by Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan and indicated that the United States had “opposed” these “irresponsible missile strikes” which “undermine the stability of the ‘Iraq,’ according to a press release.
On the outskirts of Erbil, capital of autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards claimed to have targeted and destroyed “a spy headquarters” which they attributed to Israel, as did was targeted “a gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups”, according to the official IRNA news agency.
In Syria, the Guards Corps announced on its Sepah News website that it had “identified the gathering places of commanders and main elements linked to recent terrorist operations, in particular the Islamic State” (IS), in Syria, and the having “destroyed by firing a number of ballistic missiles”. He explained that this attack in Syria was carried out in “response to the recent crimes of terrorist groups who have unjustly martyred a number of our dear compatriots in Kerman and Rask.”
On January 3, attackers carried out a suicide attack against a crowd gathered in Kerman, southern Iran, during a memorial ceremony near the tomb of General Qassem Soleimani, the former architect of military operations Iranians in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 by an American strike in Iraq. The attack, claimed by ISIS, left around 90 dead and many injured.
Read alsoThe attack in Kerman recalls the “blood debt between the Islamic State group and Iran”
In Iraqi Kurdistan, at least “four civilians” were killed and six others injured in Iranian missile attacks, the authorities of the autonomous region announced in a press release, specifying that some injured were in “critical condition” . An AFP correspondent in Erbil heard several loud explosions, as the missiles hit an upscale residential area on the outskirts of Erbil, northeast of the Kurdistan capital.
“Violation of sovereignty”
In a press release, the Kurdistan Security Council accuses Tehran of resorting to “unfounded justifications” for its repeated bombings against the region. “What happened is a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the region and of Iraq. The federal government and the international community must not remain silent in the face of these crimes,” the statement said.
Earlier, the ruling party in Erbil, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), reported the deaths of civilians, including a real estate tycoon, Peshraw Dizayee, and members of his family, their homes having been hit.
A year ago, Tehran repeatedly bombed the positions of the various groups of the Iranian Kurdish opposition, accused in particular of being involved in the protest movement triggered after the death in detention, in September 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a Iranian Kurd arrested by the moral police.
“Espionage Operations”
Early Tuesday, the Revolutionary Guards assured that they had targeted and destroyed an Israeli target in Iraqi Kurdistan – “the headquarters of the spies of the Zionist regime (Mossad)”, according to IRNA. The targeted site would have been used to “develop espionage operations and plan terrorist actions in the region”, according to the same source.
If Iraq criminalizes any contact with Israel, politicians from autonomous Kurdistan have been able to be complacent on the subject in the past. But the official line of Kurdistan remains cautious and denies any relationship or desire for normalization with Israel.
According to IRNA, the attack in Erbil comes in retaliation for the recent assassinations of several commanders of the Revolutionary Guards but also of leaders of the “axis of resistance” – the name given to Tehran’s allies in its fight against Israel.
On January 2, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, and six other officials and executives of the Palestinian Islamist movement. In mid-January, Wissam Tawil, a senior military official of the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in southern Lebanon by a strike also attributed to Israel.
With AFP