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In recent weeks, Iran’s military strikes in both Pakistan and Iraq have sent shockwaves throughout the region, escalating tensions to an alarming level. The deadly attacks have not only claimed numerous lives but have also raised concerns about the stability and security of the affected countries. As the international community closely monitors these developments, it becomes crucial to understand the underlying factors behind Iran’s actions and their potential implications for the already volatile region. In this blog post, we will delve into the details of these strikes and their far-reaching consequences.
Pakistan and Iraq have disputed Iran’s claim that terrorist organizations responsible for assaults on their territory are the target of its missile strikes.
Iran launched missile attacks on its neighbours Pakistan and Iraq on Tuesday, drawing harsh criticism from both nations and escalating concerns that the unrest in the Middle East may get out of hand.
Iran has utilised its proxy troops to attack Israel and its supporters ever since the Gaza War broke out in October. On Tuesday, however, it said that terrorist assaults had occurred inside its borders, prompting the most recent missile strikes.
Despite this, the missile attacks heightened tensions in an area where at least five countries have already been affected by war.
Following the attack on Iraq, France’s minister for Europe and international affairs, Catherine Colonna, declared, “They are contributing to the escalation of regional tensions— and it must stop.” The national security advisor to President Biden, Jake Sullivan, likewise opposed the assault on Iraq.
The first country to disclose being struck by an attack in the Kurdistan area that claimed many lives, including an 11-month-old child, was Iraq. Pakistan said it had also been impacted by its neighbour, Iran, shortly after the Iraqi government phoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad and withdrew its ambassador to Tehran in protest of the strike.
The government released a statement saying, “Pakistan strongly condemns the unprovoked violation of its airspace by Iran and the strike inside Pakistani territory, which resulted in the death of two innocent children while injuring three girls.” “This is an utterly unacceptable breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty, with potentially dire repercussions.”
Tuesday’s missile attack in nuclear-armed Pakistan struck a secluded mountainous area. Ballistic missiles and drones were used in the attack, which featured ballistic missiles and struck Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, at approximately midnight on Tuesday. Iraq and Iran have close political and military connections. According to Iraqi government sources, four people were killed.
In both instances, Iranian officials declared they were pursuing terrorists whom they believed to be responsible for recent attacks on Iranian soil that had deeply unsettled Iranians. At a funeral march honouring a respected military commander in Iran, suicide bombers murdered 84 people last month. At least 11 police officers were also slain in an attack on a police station in December.
The governments of Pakistan and Iraq disagreed with Iran’s explanations.
In a statement, Pakistan stated that it was “even more concerning that this illegal act has taken place despite the existence of several channels of communication between Pakistan and Iran.” Pakistan has always maintained that terrorism poses a common threat to all nations in the region and that coordinated action is necessary to combat it.
Iran’s activities coincided with a generalised worry that the already horrific Gaza war may expand into a deadlier regional confrontation. It has already sparked a low-level battle between Western powers, including the United States, and Iranian proxy troops.
The Iranian strike in Iraq prompted the U.S. Consulate to sound sirens and the airport in Erbil to halt aircraft, a move that was decried by the United States, Britain, and France.
Iran has given mixed messages about its overall aims in the area ever since Israel and Hamas started their fight.
Iranian leaders have been expressing in private that they wish to prevent a more protracted battle. However, they have also been making confident statements in public on the country’s support of proxy armed groups in the area and their significance in maintaining pressure on Israel and its allies.
Hezbollah has been conducting attacks on northern Israel from Lebanon, while the Houthis, who are supported by Iran and operate out of Yemen, have been assaulting ships in the Red Sea to disrupt international trade. In the last three months, Iraqi militias with close ties to Iran have attacked American outposts and camps in both Syria and Iraq more than 130 times.
Iran has bombed Syria in recent days, in addition to Pakistan and Iraq. Idlib is home to the Islamic State, which took credit for the attack on the Iranian funeral march. Thus yet, the Syrian government—closely aligned with Iran—has not voiced any opposition in public.
According to the semiofficial Tasnim News agency of Pakistan, the attack was carried out by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and targeted a location thought to be the base of the militant organisation that took credit for the attack on the police station in Rask, which is close to Iran’s border with Pakistan.
The missile attack on Iraq caused a rift between Tehran and Baghdad, if only momentarily.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry announced in a statement on Tuesday that Iraq has lodged a complaint against the Iranian “aggression” with the United Nations Security Council. Additionally, Qassim Al-Araji, Iraq’s national security advisor, used some of the toughest words Baghdad has used to criticise its neighbour when he referred to the Iranian justification for its operations as “baseless.”
“A civilian businessman owned the house that was bombed,” Mr. Al-Araji stated, having hurried from Baghdad to Erbil just hours after the explosion.
As the Iraqi government’s go-to person on a variety of delicate matters pertaining to Iran, Mr. Al-Araji has a long history of collaborating closely with Tehran and is rarely critical in public. According to his remarks on Tuesday, Baghdad thought its neighbour was undermining it.
The Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee, his daughter Zhina, her foreign babysitter, and visiting business associate Karam Mikhail were among the victims of the strike.
Analysts speculated that the hit on Erbil was an attempt to persuade Iranians that the government was punishing the attackers even though Tehran’s security and intelligence services had failed to stop the attack on the funeral procession.
Kurdistan has been the target of the Revolutionary Guards before. At least two incidents occurred in 2022, and several attacks occurred during Iran’s 2019 unrest, which Iranian government officials said were instigated by Iranian dissidents in Kurdistan.
However, the strike this week exacerbated the tense political situation surrounding the Iraqi government’s attempts to remove American forces from its land. Since 2014, they have aided Iraq in battling the Islamic State’s remnants and preventing its resurgence.
Iran also wants the American forces to go because, given the animosity between the Iranian and American administrations, it views their presence as a security danger.
Iraq is enmeshed in the conflict. The nation’s Parliament, which is made up of several members with connections to Iran, has decided to withdraw the soldiers. Following the death of a militia commander with ties to Iran in Baghdad due to an American attack, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani declared he would start figuring out how the forces would leave and form a committee to handle the specifics.
He gave no timeframe, but recent interviews with several of the parties involved by the New York Times have hinted that this time the Iraqi government was taking the situation seriously, in contrast to previous instances in which it expressed a desire for the soldiers to depart but did not take concrete steps to make that happen.
The Tuesday strike may significantly complicate the discussions.
A barrier to exit negotiations has been the Kurds, who have strong ties to the United States and have profited from the country’s ongoing presence, in addition to concerns over the rise of the Islamic State. In 2014, when extremists from the Islamic State approached the Kurdish capital just a few kilometres away, U.S. forces defended the Kurds. Although Kurdish authorities had previously shown reluctance to accept the withdrawal of American forces, the assault on the capital appeared to confirm their beliefs.
At a press conference while attending the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of Kurdistan, harshly denounced the attack on Erbil, saying, “We don’t think that terrorism has ended, and last night’s event is an indication that instability in the region is still very much at stake.”
