Iran enters the Middle East fray, fires in all directions
A branch of the Iranian armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, unleashed its fore power in the week as it went in pursuit if the country’s perceived enemies everywhere in the region.
Iran launched ballistic missiles into Iraq and Pakistan, triggering anger and diplomatic face offs. Iran said it hit the “headquarters of spies” in Erbil, northern Iraq on Monday night. Iraqi sources said 10 missiles fell near the U.S. Consulate.
Iran said the hit at Iraq targeted and destroyed one of the main headquarters of Israel’s spying agency Mossad in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, but Iraqi officials denied the building was related to Mossad.
Some four civilians were killed and six injured in the attack, including an 11-month-old baby who was reportedly killed just days before her first birthday.
Iraqi politician Mashan al-Jabouri wrote in a post on X that prominent Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayi was among those killed by one of the missiles, which landed on Dizayi’s “palace.” Also reportedly killed in the attack were Dizayi’s daughter Zhina, the family’s foreign babysitter who remains unnamed, and Dizayi’s acquaintance Karam Mikhail.
Western coalition forces in the region also shot down three drones near Erbil airport—the latest in increasing drone attacks in the area, where U.S. and other international forces are stationed. Air traffic at the airport has been suspended, the airport confirmed to Rudaw.
The U.S. State Department described the Iranian strikes as “reckless” and “undermine Iraq’s stability.” Iraqi officials described the Iranian strikes as inhumane terrorist attack.
Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad on Tuesday over the Iranian strikes, and the Iraqi foreign ministry announced that it would submit a complaint against Iran to the United Nations Security Council.
The IRGC also launched a separate missile attack that struck targets in Syria, the group said in a statement on Monday. That attack targeted those allegedly involved in a bombing in Kerman earlier this month that killed at least 94 people as well as in an attack on a police station in Rask.
Syria Civil Defense, the volunteer organization known as the White Helmets, reported that a strike targeted a defunct medical center and left two civilians with minor injuries.
On Tuesday, Iranian state media reported that the IRGC also launched an attack on what it described as two bases for a militant group in Pakistan—though the reports were later removed. Pakistani officials said the strikes damaged a mosque, and Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that two children were killed and three others wounded in the attack.
The statement also noted that the Iranian chargé d’affaires has been summoned to the ministry for the “blatant violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty” and that “the responsibility for the consequences will lie squarely with Iran.”
“The dangerous precedent set by Iran is destabilizing and has reciprocal implications,” a senior Pakistani security official said.
The strikes in the week come amid escalating tensions in the Middle East since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, which has led to proxy conflicts between each side’s allies—notably between the U.S., which backs Israel, and Iran, which supports Hamas.
