Iran has launched strikes against targets in three allied countries – Syria, Iraq and Pakistan – in two days. Pakistan responded with a missile attack on Iranian territory. So why did Iran do it, and why did it happen now?
Everything suggests Iran’s military, the Revolutionary Guards, were under pressure to act from Islamic hardliners inside the country.
Iran said it targeted a “Mossad spy headquarters” as “revenge” after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that killed dozens in Tehran.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tuesday it destroyed an Israeli spy headquarters in a series of airstrikes near the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq, and the attack killed a wealthy Kurdish businessman and other civilians.
Iran launched missile strikes on three different countries this week – Iraq, Syria and Pakistan – while proxy militant groups it backs continue to target US and Western interests and fight Israel, stoking fears of conflict that could engulf the Middle East and spread to other regions.
Why did Iran conduct strikes on Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria?
On the evening of Monday, January 15, Iran targeted sites in Syria and Iraq with 24 ballistic missiles from southern and western Iran, with a range exceeding 1,200 kilometers.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that it launched four “Khaibar Shekan” (Khaibar Breaker) missiles towards what it described as an “Islamic State organization headquarters” in Idlib.
Turkey said it had destroyed 23 targets in overnight air strikes on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq and Syria, a further escalation of conflict south of its border.
The attacks were the latest by Turkey since nine Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq on Friday.
The impression that Iran regards Pakistan as a serious security threat on par with the Israeli spy base in Iraq and ISIS ones in Syria that it also struck in sequence. With all three taking place as the latest Israeli-Hamas war escalates into a regional proxy war between Israel-US and Iran, the innuendo is that Pakistan is aligned with them against Tehran, which could turn the whole Global South against Islamabad.
Tehran’s top diplomat said on Wednesday that his country’s armed forces targeted an “Iranian terrorist group” in Pakistan the day before, after Islamabad said the strike killed two children.
“On Pakistan, none of the nationals of the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan were targeted by Iranian missiles and drones,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani canceled a meeting with Iran’s foreign minister at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland in protest over Iranian missile strikes on the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil, a source said on Wednesday.
Pakistan conducted lethal strikes inside Iran on Thursday, two days after Tehran attacked alleged Israel-linked militant bases on Pakistan soil.
Pakistan’s strikes resulted in women and children casualties, while Iran’s attack on Pakistan killed two children.
Iran and Its Allies Are Fighting With Missiles and Memes
On January 12, the United Kingdom and the United States launched military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. These attacks were a response to the group’s assaults on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which have disrupted global trade. The Houthis’ actions briefly made them the most prominent members of a military coalition that has become increasingly active across the region following the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri and other Hamas leaders in Beirut on January 2. For following their deaths, Hezbollah’s commander, Hassan Nasrallah vowed retribution and declared that the fight against Israel required nothing less than an “axis of resistance.” In the hours that followed Nasrallah’s pledge, his words were spliced into slickly produced videos and spread widely. Then the axis attacked. Hezbollah pounded Israel’s Meron air surveillance base with 62 rockets; the Iraq-based Islamic Resistance group sent drones to attack U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq and targeted the Israeli city of Haifa with a long-range cruise missile; the Houthis struck in the Red Sea; and Iran captured an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.