Iran rids region of rats
IRGC targets terrorists in Iraq, Syria
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) launched missile strikes on terrorist targets in Syria and in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region in response to recent terrorist attacks in Iran and assassinations of the resistance front’s commanders.
Early Tuesday, the IRGC said it fired barrages of ballistic missiles at Syrian bases of terrorists who were involved in the terrorist attacks in the Iranian cities of Kerman and Rask, as well as an Israeli espionage center in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
The IRGC said the first missile strike targeted gathering places of commanders and main elements of the two explosions that killed nearly 100 people and wounded scores of others at a memorial for Iran’s top anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman on January 3.
The Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the explosions.
Last month, another attack hit a police station in the southeastern Iranian city of Rask, killing 11 police officers and injuring at least six others.
The IRGC said in a later statement that another missile attack totally destroyed a main espionage center of the Israeli regime’s Mossad spy agency in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Among the key targets there was Azhi Amin, a former member of an Al-Qaeda affiliate, who was reportedly killed in the IRGC attack.
The missile strike against the Mossad center, the statement said, was in retaliation for the recent assassinations of the resistance front’s commanders, especially those of the IRGC, by Israel.
Senior IRGC commander Razi Mousavi was killed on Jan. 2 in a strike in Syria that was widely blamed on Israel. This month, Hamas No. 2 Saleh al-Arouri was also killed in a Beirut strike that the Lebanese officials blamed on Israel.
“The action was in defense of the country’s sovereignty and security, and countering terrorism, and was a part of the Islamic Republic’s just punishment against violators of the country’s security,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.
“The Islamic Republic has always supported peace, stability, and security in the region and respected other countries’ sovereignty; nonetheless, Tehran will not hesitate to exercise its legitimate and legal right to deter all sources of threat against its national security, defend its citizens and punish the criminals,” he
said.
Iraq summoned Iran’s envoy in Baghdad and recalled its ambassador from Tehran over the missile strikes after it claimed that the missiles struck a businessman’s family home.
Iraq said that it would lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council over the Iranian “attack on its sovereignty”.
Four people were killed and six wounded in the strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan, the region’s security council said.
The IRGC said their reprisals “will continue until the last drops of blood of the martyrs are avenged.”
Iran has repeatedly targeted the terrorists in Iraq and Syria and has frequently urged the two Arab countries not to let anti-Iran groups to be active in the countries.