It was Iran's first open reaction three months after the Israeli incursion into Gaza. Between Monday night and yesterday morning, missiles launched by the Revolutionary Guard from three Iranian provinces hit targets in Irbil, capital of semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, and in the Syrian province of Idlib. In the first case, against the Israeli “Mosad spy base,” in retaliation for the death of Revolutionary Guard commander Reza Mousavi on December 25 in an attack in Damascus. In the second, against alleged bases in Syria of the Islamic State (IS), responsible for the death of 84 people in a double attack in Kerman (Iran) on January 3. For Tehran, both objectives are inseparable, since it considers the Islamic State a tool of the US and Israel. The attack in Syria is nevertheless somewhat confusing, since the missiles hit centers in Tahrir al Sham (former Jabat al Nusra) and the Turkestan Islamic Party, both linked to Al Qaeda, but which apparently would provide support to the Islamic State-Khorasan , the core of IS in Afghanistan responsible for the Kerman massacre.
Iran has already announced that it would respond in due course to the aggressions suffered. And this has been timely, coinciding with the confrontation between the US Navy and the Houthis of Yemen in the Red Sea. The most obvious reading (although not necessarily the most accurate) suggests that Tehran believes the time has come for the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – against Israel – to show itself forcefully. These are – apart from Hamas in Gaza – the Houthis, the Lebanese Hizbullah and the Shiite militias of Iraq, such as the so-called Islamic Resistance – a member of the Popular Mobilization Forces and whose leader was assassinated in Baghdad by an US drone. .US on January 4 – which launched drones again yesterday, without success, against the Irbil airport.
Tehran has said and repeated that it does not want to get into a conflagration, in which it would certainly have everything to lose, especially if it attempted the adventure of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, which is capital for oil transit. However, he has sufficient resources to carry out coups that generate a feeling of instability for the United States and its allies, as demonstrated by the Houthi campaign in the Red Sea.
The other battlefield is again Iraq. The protest, presented yesterday, from Baghdad to Tehran for the violation of its territory, with the call for consultations of its ambassador in Iran and the questioning of the Iranian chargé d'affaires, revealed true impotence.
Washington called the bombing in Irbil “reckless and imprecise.” Note the nuance of “vague”: the Kurdish authorities categorically denied the presence of Israeli espionage in their territory after the death of four civilians in the attack, including the millionaire Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayi and his 11-month-old daughter. But the Iranian Irna agency expanded by saying that Dizayi “was actually Mossad's cover” and “responsible for its logistical support,” as well as the owner of a security company that works for the United States.
Iraq's Shiite militias have been harassing US bases in the country – including Irbil – but this bombing, in urban areas and by Iran directly, could not be more explicit. Israel's good relations with Iraqi Kurdistan are known. This territory was pampered by the US since the first Gulf War, and with the appearance of the Islamic State it was the bridgehead for the defeat of the jihadists. The local Kurdish factions received weapons from the US, Israel and, for example, from Germany when Ursula von der Leyen was then Defense Minister. From all this, there was more than just a German restaurant in Irbil: Israel manifestly supported the frustrated Kurdish attempt at independence through a referendum (journalists from Irbil went to Catalonia to observe October 1, by the way) as a means of containing the so-called Shiite growing in the region, already too powerful in Iraq.
But Kurdistan does not constitute a unity. The great stateless people have elements in northern Iraq who are enemies of Irbil and loyal to the Turkish PKK, just as is the case in Syria. Turkey – on the contrary, is a friend of Irbil –, after several days of skirmishes, has hit northern Kurds in Iraq and Syria in 23 air strikes, giving even more complexity to a panorama that contains all the paradoxes typical of the Middle East.
