On January 15, the Revolutionary Guards of the Iranian dictatorship launched a missile strike on northern Iraq, marking the most recent escalation of tensions in the many military conflicts raging across the Middle East. Mossad, Israel’s principal espionage organization, has a base in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, and Iranian officials claimed that this was their target in the attack.
A statement from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards alleged that the group carried out the assault in retaliation for earlier Israeli strikes that had killed Iranian resistance fighters and their commanders. According to the report, one of the Mossad’s “main espionage headquarters” in the Middle East was destroyed in the strikes. This facility was responsible for planning terrorist attacks in Iran and other nations in the region, as well as conducting spy operations.
During a news conference in Baghdad, Iraq’s foreign minister Fuad Hussein stated that there was never a Mossad center in Erbil. Additionally, he asserted that the Iranian strikes constituted an obvious “violation of international law” and mentioned that he would personally submit a formal protest to the UN Security Council. According to Hussein, the Iranian dictatorship is looking for additional “victims” because it knows it cannot attack Israel.
After the incident, a huge home belonging to a prominent Kurdistani businessman was reportedly leveled, and the number of casualties is yet unknown. If the villa was a deliberate target or not is still up for debate.
The Security Council of the Kurdistan Region released a statement lamenting the attack’s toll of four civilian deaths and six seriously wounded innocent people. It went on to say that Iran’s actions constituted a “blatant violation” that threatened the independence of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
The United States and the United Kingdom were among the Western nations that denounced the strikes, claiming that Iran is intentionally inflaming the situation in the Middle East.
In the same day that its attacks in Iraq began, Iran carried out parallel strikes in Pakistan and Syria. Meanwhile, 9 people were killed in a missile strike that Pakistan launched at Iran.
