Iran launches missile strikes in Iraq and Syria, citing terrorist attacks

Baghdad: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched a missile attack against what they called “anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in a northern Iraqi city, setting off large explosions and sirens, including at the US Consulate, around midnight Tuesday.

The strike in the city of Irbil killed at least four civilians, according to the Kurdistan Regional Security Council in Iraq, and air traffic was diverted briefly, officials said.

A separate ballistic missile attack hit targets in Syria connected to the Islamic State group, the Guard said.

A statement by the elite Revolutionary Guard said the missile strike in Irbil had been aimed at “the destruction of espionage headquarters and places that anti-Iranian terrorist groups” used to plan a suicide bombing attack in Kerman, Iran, that killed 86 people this month at a memorial procession for Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The Guard also cited an assault in December on a police headquarters in Rask, Iran, that killed at least 11 officers.

Some Iranian leaders initially appeared to blame Israel for the attack at the Soleimani memorial, though the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for it. In a statement later Tuesday, the Revolutionary Guard appeared to return to the narrative that blamed Israel, saying the target in Irbil had been the local headquarters for Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.

The attacks at the memorial and at the police station were seen as a signs of Iran’s vulnerability to infiltration by extremist groups despite its formidable intelligence service and police capabilities.

Direct attacks by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, while not new, have been far less frequent than those conducted by Iran’s proxies.

Those militant groups have launched at least 130 assaults on U.S. installations in Iraq and Syria since the war in the Gaza Strip began in October, after Hamas led an attack in southern Israel that, Israeli officials say, killed 1,200 people. Israel retaliated by bombarding the strip, killing more than 23,000 people and displacing millions, according to Gaza health officials.

Several of the explosions early Tuesday occurred near where a new U.S. Consulate in Irbil is under construction, and several other explosions happened near the Irbil airport. A U.S. official said: “No U.S. facilities were impacted. We’re not tracking damage to infrastructure or injuries at this time.”

Irbil is the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq and is its most populous city. The Kurdish region’s security council called on the international community to condemn the Iranian attack, which it described as “a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Kurdistan region and Iraq and the federal government.”

In a statement, the council said that “Irbil is a stable region and has never been a threat to any party,” adding: “The Revolutionary Guard said that the attack targeted several sites of Iranian opposition groups. Unfortunately, they always use baseless excuses to attack Irbil.”

Kifah Mahmood, a former media adviser to Massoud Barzani, the retired longtime leader of Kurdistan, said the Revolutionary Guard had been trying to “cover up their own security failure” in Kerman by staging a retaliatory attack. “But unfortunately,” he said, “the missiles landed on civilians and killed some, and injured others.”

The attacks occurred as Iranian-linked groups have been targeting U.S. bases and camps in Iraq and Syria, and Iranian proxy groups like the Houthi militants in Yemen have been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea amid Israel’s war against Hamas, the group that controls parts of the Gaza Strip. They are acting, the Houthis say, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Those attacks have heightened tensions in the Middle East, and raised the risk that an already dangerous situation would flare into greater regional violence.