Iraq delivered a strong rebuke to its ally on Tuesday, by summoning Iran’s representative in Baghdad and withdrawing its ambassador from Tehran. This action was in response to the lethal missile attacks on Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.
Iraq summoned Iran’s envoy in Baghdad and recalled its ambassador from Tehran on Tuesday in a sharp rebuke to its ally over deadly missile strikes on its autonomous Kurdish region.
Iraq challenged Iran’s claim that the strikes targeted Israel’s intelligence services in response to recent Israeli assassinations of Iranian and pro-Iranian commanders.
It said it would lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council over the Iranian “attack on its sovereignty”.
Iran’s strikes, which also hit alleged Islamic State group targets in Iraq’s western neighbor Syria, came with tensions high across the Middle East as Israel battles Iran ally Hamas and drew condemnation from the United States.
Four people were killed and six wounded in the strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan, the region’s security council said.
The casualties included prominent real estate magnate Peshraw Dizayee, his wife and other family members who were hit by a strike on their home, the region’s leading party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said.
Iran defended its missile strikes in Iraq and Syria, saying they were a “targeted operation” and “just punishment” against those who breach the Islamic republic’s security.
“The Islamic republic, with its high intelligence capability, in a precise and targeted operation identified the criminals’ headquarters and hit it with precision weapons,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had destroyed the “regime’s spy headquarters in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.”
The strike came “in response to the recent vicious actions of the Hebrew state which martyred the commanders of the Revolutionary Guards and the resistance front,” a Guards statement carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency said.
Senior Guards commander Razi Moussavi was killed in a strike in Syria last month that was widely blamed on Israel. This month, Hamas number two Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a Beirut strike that Lebanese officials blamed on Israel.
After a visit Tuesday to the scene of the strike, Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qassem al-Araji dismissed Iran’s claim it had hit an Israeli intelligence base, saying it struck a businessman’s family home.
The US State Department condemned the “reckless” Iranian strikes, saying they undermined Iraq’s stability.
Khalil Wakim, with AFP
