Late on Monday, official television in Iran said that the Revolutionary Guards had assaulted the Israeli spy centre in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq. The elite force also claimed to have attacked the Islamic official in Syria.
Since Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas started fighting on October 7, there have been fears about the conflict’s escalation throughout the Middle East. Iran’s supporters have also entered the fray, joining from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. These concerns have led to the current strikes.
“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.
The Guards claimed to have “fired a number of ballistic missiles in Syria and destroyed the perpetrators of terrorist operations” in Iran, including the Islamic State, in addition to the strikes northeast of Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, in a residential area close to the American consulate.
At a tribute for top commander Qassem Soleimani, two blasts that occurred in Iran this month that left about 100 people dead and numerous others injured were claimed by the Islamic State.
“We assure our nation that the Guards’ offensive operations will continue until avenging the last drops of martyrs’ blood,” the statement read.
Iran has already pledged retaliation for the deaths of three Guardsmen in Syria last month, including a senior commander who had provided military advice to the Guardsmen.
At the time, according to Iranian state media and three security sources, they were killed by an Israeli airstrike.
Iraq protested over the strikes by phoning Iran’s charge d’affaires in Baghdad and returning its envoy from Tehran, according to the foreign ministry. Baghdad declared that it will pursue all legal options to stop what it considered to be an infringement on its sovereignty.
