Middle East tensions: Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced that they attacked "Israeli spy headquarters" in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region as regional conflict as well as against the Islamic State in Syria, the state media reported late on Monday. The attacks came amid fears of an escalation of the Israel-Hamas war with the entry of Iran from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, also drawing the attention of the United States, Iran's staunch rival and Israel's closest ally.
"In response to the recent atrocities of the Zionist regime, causing the killing of commanders of the Guards and the Axis of Resistance ... one of the main Mossad espionage headquarters in Iraq's Kurdistan region was destroyed with ballistic missiles," the Guards said in a statement. This comes after Iran accused Israel of killing a high-ranking Iranian general Sayyed Razi Mousavi, last month in an airstrike in Damascus.
The Revolutionary Guards said Israel would suffer for killing Mousavi, who held the Guards' rank of brigadier-general. Two members of the guards were killed earlier in December. Israel has for years carried out attacks against what it describes as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran's influence has grown since it backed President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war that erupted in Syria in 2011.
"We assure our nation that the Guards' offensive operations will continue until avenging the last drops of martyrs' blood," the Guards' statement said. In addition to those strikes, the Guards said they "fired a number of ballistic missiles in Syria and destroyed the perpetrators of terrorist operations" in Iran, including the Islamic State.
The Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility earlier this month for two suicide bombings targeting a commemoration for Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian general slain in a 2020 US drone strike. The attack in Kerman killed at least 84 people and wounded an additional 284 at the ceremony.
Casualties in the Iranian strikes
Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani condemned the attack on Erbil as a "crime against the Kurdish people". At least four civilians were killed and six injured in the strikes on Erbil, the Kurdistan government's security council said in a statement, describing the attack as a "crime."
Multimillionaire Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee and several members of his family were killed in the attacks when a rocket crashed into their home, according to security and medical sources. Dizayee, who was close to the ruling Barzani clan, owned businesses that led major real estate projects in Kurdistan.
Iran has in the past carried out strikes in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region, saying the area is used as a staging ground for Iranian separatist groups as well as agents of its arch-foe Israel. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have launched near-daily drone attacks on bases housing US forces in Iraq and Syria, which the groups have said was in retaliation for Washington's support of Israel, and in an attempt to force US troops to leave the region.
Iran, which supports Hamas in its war with Israel, accuses the United States of backing what it calls Israeli crimes in Gaza. The US has said it backs Israel in its campaign but has raised concerns about the number of Palestinian civilians killed.
To make things worse, Iran's navy seized an oil tanker on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman that once was at the centre of a major crisis between Tehran and Washington. The vessel was once known as the Suez Rajan and had been involved in a yearlong dispute that ultimately saw the US Justice Department seize 1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil on it.
(with inputs from agencies)
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