The timing of the Iranian bombing of what Tehran considered Israeli “strategic targets” in the city of Erbil raises a number of questions about the content of the message that Tehran wanted to convey as well as the domestic and international dimensions and implications.
This comes at a time particularly charged with conflict and international tension that the world has not witnessed since World War II. It is necessary to read the event from several angles.
Ballistic Attack
At 01:20 local time on March 13th, up to a dozen short-range ballistic missiles, most likely the Fateh-110, were launched from Iran's Tabriz region toward the densely populated Erbil.
The missiles traveled about 275 kilometers, and each carried more than 1,100 pounds of explosives.
Most of the projectiles accurately hit a luxury villa owned by Baz Kareem, a prominent businessman associated with the Barzani family who are KDP leaders.
At least one hit a nearby K24 television station, which is owned by Barzani. Fortunately, there were no fatalities - perhaps because of the late hour or because the targeting was accurate.
However, the risk of collateral damage was high, and Iran accepted this risk by firing large missiles at long range to the city.
In a departure from Tehran's practice of exercising military pressure through armed factions acting on its behalf, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced targeting what it said were Israeli "strategic centers" operating secretly from Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, “It is absolutely not acceptable for one of our neighbors, with whom we have deep relations at various levels, to turn into the focus of a threat to Iran whether by counter-revolutionary terrorist groups or other terrorist groups or by the Zionist entity operating in the region."
A set of justifications was offered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its propaganda channels in Iran and Iraq, including that Tehran was retaliating for the February 14th attack by Israeli drones on an Iranian drone base in Kermanshah province.
Iranian sources say that the drone attack was launched from an Israeli base in Erbil, an incident that the Iranian regime blamed on Israel.
The missile attack also came just days after an Israeli air strike on March 7 in Syria killed two IRGC colonels, Ehsan Karbalaeipour and Morteza Saeed Nejad, prompting the IRGC to threaten retaliation the next day.
The United States' confiscation of an Iranian oil tanker in the Bahamas and its refusal to release it despite Iranian demands increased the anger of the Revolutionary Guard leaders toward Iranian intelligence officials, which was the main motive for the escalation, according to one of the officials.
The recent Erbil incident is the first of its kind that Iran has publicly and explicitly claimed to implement since the attack on the American base of Ain al-Assad, which was clearly a sham attack to save face after the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
But what prompted Iran to change the method of its attacks in Iraq? It previously relied almost entirely on its proxies to carry out its missions, namely the “armed Shiite factions” that all joined in the popular mobilization and launched dozens of attacks in Baghdad and the Iraqi provinces in recent years.
The attacks targeted military bases in which the American forces are located, the headquarters of the American diplomatic missions in Baghdad and Erbil, in addition to the logistical support columns of the international coalition forces.
As for Iran’s messages from the attack, the aim of Tehran’s resorting to carrying out its own attacks this time may be to deliver a two-folded direct message to the both the Iraqi government and international players.
One is that Iran is not afraid to launch a direct strike on its own inside Iraq and bomb any target it wants and announce that it does not need proxies, and this is undoubtedly a remarkable change and development in the method of Iranian attacks.
The second is that Iran, by striking Erbil, confirms that its national security interest is above all Iraqi political considerations and that its security is a red line. Moreover, Iran will not allow any future Iraqi rapprochement with Israel or whomever Iran sees as its enemy, like some Arab and Western countries, and that ballistic missiles will be used to destroy any site that Tehran sees as a threat.
As for the hypotheses put forward to explain the reasons for Iran targeting the American consulate in Erbil, they can be addressed in two dimensions, an international regional dimension, and an internal Iraqi dimension.
International Regional Dimensions
What is remarkable about the Erbil attack is that it came during the last few meters that separated the Americans and Iranians from reviving the nuclear agreement after 11 weeks of hard negotiations in Vienna.
But in recent days the talks have seen Russian obstruction, with Moscow demanding that the Americans ensure that sanctions imposed on it for its invasion of Ukraine do not undermine its trade relations with Iran.
It seems that the Iranians are trying to heat up the scene and put pressure on Washington at a moment when it does not seem willing to engage in any military confrontation at all.
Rather, it is rushing to conclude understandings with Iran to reinstate the nuclear agreement for domestic reasons, including making an achievement that the Biden administration needs now, as well as international reasons, including devoting themselves to confronting the repercussions of the Ukrainian crisis.
Here, too, Iran sends messages to Washington that it will not abandon its armed arms in the region, a US demand that Tehran refused to include in the ongoing nuclear negotiations in Vienna.
From time to time, Iran creates bargaining chips in its negotiations with the major powers in Vienna to put an end to its nuclear program. However, this time the card is the security of the city of Erbil, which includes the American consulate and an American military base as well.
On the other hand, the reason for the great Iranian escalation is coupled with the distraction of American focus towards what is happening in Ukraine. To some extent, this helps the Russians, Iran’s ally who is fighting a military war in Ukraine, a war that is not taking place according to their plans due to the depletion of Russia’s military and economic capabilities.
Iran sought, through its ballistic attacks on Erbil targeting the vicinity of the American Consulate, to deliver urgent and quick messages to Washington that it and its arms in Iraq are capable of a threat to Washington's interests if the latter insists on continuing to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
There is also the potential export of natural gas from the Kurdistan region to Europe via Turkey. This could give the European Union an alternative source of gas to reduce dependence on Russia.
Thus, the logic of the attacks includes "an intersection between Russian and Iranian (or Revolutionary Guards) interests."
The Iranian attack targeted the home of the owner of the Kar oil company, which controls the oil sector in the Kurdistan region and is the one who is extending the Kurdistan gas pipeline to the Turkish border with plans to export the region's gas to Turkey, all of which contradicts Iranian interests.
Internal dimensions: Imposing the Will of Tehran's Allies
Despite Tehran's claim that the bombing came in response to the killing of two Iranian leaders in Syria, it can be described as a direct entry into the Iraqi crisis of forming a government.
After excluding the pro-Iranian factions from the negotiations to form the next coalition government, Iranian intervention was required to counter this plan.
The results of the Iraqi elections in October 2021 witnessed major changes, as the militia blocs loyal to Iran lost the majority of their parliamentary seats, and those elections gave a victory to the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite leader who opposes Iranian influence and also opposes the main competitor of his sect, who is allied with Iran.
Al-Sadr threatened to exclude Iranian-backed groups from the government and established an alliance with the Kurdistan Democratic Party that governs Erbil, as well as with Sunni Arab groups, most notably Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi. Additionally, al-Sadr announced that he would nominate his cousin Jaafar al-Sadr to be the Iraqi ambassador to Beirut.
This pushed factions supporting Iran to stir up escalation during the past months in an attempt to return political understandings about the next government to the context of consensus and quotas once again.
Iran, through its proxies, failed to dismantle the tripartite alliance between the Democratic Party, the Sadrist movement and Al-Halbousi, or to obtain guarantees from this alliance regarding the future directions and strategies of any Iraqi government that may be formed in the near future. He is accused by Iranian circles of contributing to the dispersal of the Shiite House by excluding Iranian-backed parties in the next government.
Assessment
The unusual direct strike coincides with a potential turning point in the balance of power in the Middle East, at a time when talks to revive the Iranian nuclear deal face the specter of collapse and the risks of war in the Gulf region are rising, while Iraqi leaders in Baghdad attempt to form a new government free of Iranian influence.
Tehran fears the throes of a new political system in Iraq that carries a desire to dismantle the Iraqi power centers loyal to Iran, especially the armed ones. Therefore, it seeks to send a message that is perhaps more clear and violent than the latest one - that a diminished Iranian influence will never happen and the coalition’s insistence on such must be broken.
In the past, it sent some drones from inside Iraq and concealed the identity of the perpetrator, but today it launches ballistic missiles from outside the borders.
The Iranian missile strike confirms a number of facts that were the subject of analysis and comment, including Iran’s continued use of Iraq as a land for settling scores.
This strike also indicates that the administration of US President Joe Biden encouraged Tehran to take this approach, after Biden slackened in applying sanctions on Iran, and lessened the maximum pressure exerted by his predecessor Donald Trump. That reduced the value of negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program.
It can be considered that Iran’s missiles are a clear message to al-Sadr, who is still facing difficulties in forming a government. Iran’s missiles are a warning message to the Kurdistan region that supports al-Sadr. What Tehran wants is to neutralize the political blocs supporting al-Sadr and thus try to thwart his attempts to form the anticipated government.
Iran's missile attack came in conjunction with Al-Sadr's announcement of the nomination of Jaafar Al-Sadr as Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon, and this may prove to be a reason for the timing of the Iranian attack. The attack also came at the end of the deadline set for forming the Iraqi government, which is scheduled to expire within days, after which there is no option for Iraq other than forming an emergency government from which al-Sadr is excluded.
* Jassim Mohamad is a researcher who focuses on international security & counter-terrorism; his work covers Europe, Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and Yemen), and African Sahel. He is the Head of the European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies ECCI.
