Iran bombings lead to fears of ISIS exploiting chaos amid Israel-Gaza war
▶ Extremists resurfaced with attack on event commemorating killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani
As the Middle East struggles to contain the Israel-Gaza war, which has drawn in the Lebanese Hezbollah group and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a major ISIS attack in the Iranian city of Kerman last week only underlines the risk of a wider regional conflict.
The bombings at a memorial for Iranian general Qassem Suleimani have raised fears that ISIS is now entering the fray, if only to exploit the chaos.
The so-called “double-tap” suicide bombings that have characterised many ISIS atrocities killed almost 100 people in Kerman on January 3.
Suleimani, who was assassinated in Iraq in 2020 by an American drone, led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.
The IRGC and its allied militias fought against ISIS in Iraq and Syria during the extremist group’s rise and fall to power between 2013 and 2019.
After the January 3 bombing, Hossein Salami, who now heads the IRGC, said ISIS were “mercenaries” of the US and the UK.
The US issued a statement saying it had nothing to do with the Kerman blasts, but this is unlikely to dispel tensions.
Fortunes have crumbled in the region for ISIS, following the group’s near-total defeat during the battles of Mosul and Raqqa between 2016 and 2019.
In Iraq, where ISIS previously controlled the country’s second-largest city Mosul, the group now conducts small hit-and-run attacks, in sharp contrast to hundreds of bombings and assassinations each month at its peak.
But the scale of the Kerman attacks, against the backdrop of regional tension, could signal a resurgence.
Iran appears convinced ISIS remains a threat backed by shadowy foreign forces.
Tehran has frequently repeated accusations that ISIS is supported by Israel and the US, without providing concrete evidence to support its claims.
It has blamed Israel for extremist attacks in Arab nations going as far back as 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini blamed Israel for attacks in Saudi Arabia that year.
Those attacks were the work of a fringe religious cult.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks on Kerman.
The assault does appear to be the work of ISIS, experts told The National, and fits with their obscure vision of global struggle to overthrow governments in the region, the West and Israel.
The extremist group considers the attacks in line with a push against those it labels “apostates” and “polytheists.”
ISIS – including the Afghan branch of the group that allegedly carried out the Kerman attack – prioritises targets based on its extreme prejudice against religious groups or people it views as straying from its ideology.
In this light, the Kerman attack is an attempt to be seen as relevant, despite waning power, analysts say.
“Having studied their work since 2003, this is their playbook,” says Craig Whiteside, expert on the group at the US Naval War College and co-author of The ISIS Reader.
“The global attention on Gaza means Hamas has potential to reframe a global jihad as a nationalist enterprise against Israeli occupation,” he said, which is not the way that ISIS frames jihad.
He says attacks such as the Kerman bombing distinguish ISIS from other extremist movements, including its forerunner, Al Qaeda, a trend that emerged in the early days of the Iraq invasion.
“Al Qaeda’s central leadership constantly challenged them early to avoid sectarian attacks against Shiite Iraqis because it detracted from Al Qaeda’s framing of the fight against the US, which was comparable to the Hamas and Israel struggle,” he says, adding that the militant group in Gaza wants to gain support from states and various nonstate groups.
ISIS has a vast array of enemies across the region and beyond.
Before ISIS, Al Qaeda regarded its struggle as one to violently expel western influence from the Middle East.
ISIS took this idea much further, vastly expanding its list of enemies to anyone the group considered to have strayed from its path.
The extremists also embraced violence for new political uses. “Early ISIS adherents disregarded this [Al Qaeda’s vision].
“It isn’t about killing people,” Mr Whiteside says, explaining how ISIS uses terrorism not to militarily weaken opponents, but to highlight their movement.
“It is about using violence to persuade others to adopt its framing of the conflict the way ISIS sees it.
“First they must defeat the apostates and apostate rulers,” Mr Whiteside said. He said that in the eyes of ISIS, there are no greater apostates than the Shiites.
ISIS gained notoriety for extreme brutality in Iraq, not only targeting Christians, Shiites and Yazidis, but also bombing Sunni gatherings, including funerals, to strike at Sunni sheikhs and other community figures who opposed it.
It views the Palestinian group Hamas in the same light as these “enemies”, Mr Whiteside says. “If you look at ISIS writings on Palestine, most are critiques of Hamas.
“They hate the Muslim Brotherhood and fought it in Iraq for 20 years.
“And they probably would prioritise fighting Hamas over Israel, because if the Muslim Brotherhood wins the battles of ideas then their movement is over.”
Aymenn Al Tamimi, a Middle East Forum fellow, agrees with Mr Whiteside that the attack in Iran is mainly a signal of “relevance” rather than the start of a revival of the group.
“I think it’s a bid to show relevance, yes, but strictly from the standpoint of its worldview that is seen as the only legitimate path to [eventually] liberating Palestine,” Mr Al Tamimi said.
“This means fighting and defeating the ‘apostates’ around Israel so that the ‘apostates’ no longer have a monopoly on the Palestinian cause, while at the same time being ready to target Jews and Israeli interests in Israel and around the world in a bid to show support for the people of Palestine.
“The target and timing in Iran were definitely chosen in relation to Qassem Suleimani and the anniversary of his assassination.”
It is about using violence to persuade others to adopt its framing of the conflict the way ISIS sees it CRAIG WHITESIDE Co-author of The ISIS Reader