Iran struck Iraq and Syria in response to Suleimani’s death commemoration attack
Iran carried out its longest-range ballistic missile attack on Monday night, destroying the home of a Kurdish businessman in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Among five civilians killed was wealthy Kurdish tycoon Peshraw Dizayee and his family.
Iran also hit targets in eastern Syria in a separate missile attack on the same night.
In both instances, Tehran said the attacks were in response to a January 3 bombing in Kerman, Iran, which killed about 100 people at an event commemorating Iranian general Qassem Suleimani’s death in a 2020 US air strike near Baghdad.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed a “harsh response” to the Kerman attack, claimed by ISIS, which Tehran has blamed on Israel and the US.
The missile strike on Erbil was the second Iranian attack on the city after an assault in 2022, which Iran said was in response to an Israeli raid on its territory with Kurdish assistance. It destroyed the home of Baz Karim Barzanji, a businessman who, like Mr Dizayee, was close to Erbil’s ruling Kurdish Democratic Party. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Monday night’s attacks were also in response to an Israeli air strike, this time in Syria, which killed two IRGC members.
“In response to the recent evil acts of the Zionist regime in martyring IRGC and resistance commanders, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, with its nobility and intelligence, targeted and destroyed one of the main headquarters of Israel’s spying agency Mossad in Iraq’s Kurdistan region by firing ballistic missiles,” the IRGC said.
“This Mossad headquarters has been working for espionage operations and [as] a centre for terror attacks planning in the region, especially against our beloved country,” it added.
Iran calls ISIS “mercenaries” of Israel, while also claiming that the Kurdish regional government based in Erbil hosts Mossad bases – although no evidence has been provided for the long-standing claims.
It has raised questions as to whether Monday’s attacks were linked to the continuing regional escalation between Israel and Iran.
Israel’s war in Gaza has threatened to spill over into a wider regional war pitting Iran and its allies against Israel, the US and their allies.
Tehran supports Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are fighting the Israeli military.
It also backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have clashed with the US-led maritime coalition in the Red Sea.
In Iraq and Syria, separate but related conflicts between Iran-backed militias and US allies were already simmering before the outbreak of the Gaza war and have since
Iran supports Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are fighting the Israeli military
escalated. Iran-backed militias have intensified their attacks on American bases in both countries, prompting retaliatory US air strikes, while Israeli jets continue to hit Iran-linked targets in Syria.
Experts told The National the attacks are partly a demonstration of Iranian military power, showing how it can simultaneously hit targets 1,200km away, in Syria and Iraq.
Iran is showing it can hit Israel with the strikes on groups in Idlib, said US defence analyst Mark Pyruz, a military historian focused on Iran, adding that Tehran had previously fired missiles at ISIS targets in Syria in 2017, but never at such a long range.