The Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced early Tuesday 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 a 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. 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” that they attributed to Israel — just like was targeted “a gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups”, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The US State Department stressed that the United States was “opposed” to these “irresponsible strikes” which “undermine the stability of Iraq”. Furthermore, the Guards Corps announced on its Sepah News website that it had identified in Syria “the gathering places of commanders and main elements linked to recent terrorist operations, in particular the Islamic State” (IS) and to have “destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles. He explained that this attack was carried out in “response to the recent crimes of terrorist groups who 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 Iranian military operations 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.
“Violation of sovereignty”
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.
The Kurdistan Security Council has accused Tehran of resorting to “baseless justifications” for its repeated bombings against the region. The region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called on “the Baghdad government to adopt a firm position against this violation of Iraqi sovereignty”, assuring that he would be in contact with “our partners within the international community to put a put an end to these brutal attacks.”
Earlier, the ruling party in Erbil, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), reported the deaths of civilians, including a real estate tycoon, Peshraw Dizayee, his wife and other members of his family, their home having been affected. A year ago, Tehran bombed the positions of several armed groups of the Iranian Kurdish opposition, accused in particular of being involved in the protest movement triggered after the death in detention of Mahsa Amini.
Baghdad condemns “aggression targeting its sovereignty”
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Tuesday condemned the deadly missile attacks carried out by Tehran on autonomous Kurdistan in the north of the country, seeing it as an “aggression targeting the sovereignty of Iraq and the security of its people”.
After these strikes, the Iraqi authorities “will take all legal measures” necessary, including “a complaint to the Security Council” of the UN, according to a press release from Iraqi diplomacy, which announces the formation of a commission of inquiry to prove “to Iraqi and international public opinion the falsity of the allegations of those responsible for these reprehensible acts”.
“Spy 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”. 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.