Iran Launches Missile Attacks On “Terrorist” Targets In Syria, Iraq

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have launched missile attacks on multiple “terrorist” targets in Syria and in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, state media reported Tuesday.

The official IRNA news agency said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps destroyed “a spy headquarters” and a “gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

The Guards later hit with ballistic missiles in Syria “gathering places of commanders and main elements related to recent terrorist operations particularly the Islamic State group”, their Sepah News service reported.

It added that the attack in Syria was in “response to the recent crimes of the terrorist groups that unjustly martyred a group of our dear compatriots in Kerman and Rask”.

On January 3, suicide bombers struck crowds gathered near the tomb of the revered IRGC general Qasem Soleimani in the southern city of Kerman.

The attack, for which the Islamic State group later claimed responsibility, killed around 90 people and left scores wounded.

Iran’s intelligence ministry said one of the suicide bombers was a Tajik citizen, while the identity of the other had yet to be determined.

In December, at least 11 Iranian police officers were killed in a jihadist-claimed attack on a police station in Rask, in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

That attack was claimed by Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) in a brief statement on its Telegram channel. The insurgency was formed in 2012 and is blacklisted by Iran as a “terrorist” group.

The IRGC also said it had struck an alleged Israeli target, announcing a “missile attack and the destruction of the Zionist regime’s spy headquarters (Mossad) in the Kurdistan region of Iraq”, IRNA reported.

“This headquarters has been the centre for developing espionage operations and planning terrorist actions in the region,” it said.

In November 2022, Iran had launched cross-border missile and drone strikes against Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq that it accuses of stoking a wave of protests in the Islamic republic.

The strikes came just after protests began in Iran over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurd arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women.