Iran strikes targets in northern Iraq and Syria as regional tensions escalate

Iran said late Monday it had launched strikes against a "spy headquarters and gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups" shortly after missiles hit an upscale area near the US consulate in Erbil, the seat of Iraq’s Kurdish region.

The security council of the Kurdish regional government said in a statement that four civilians were killed and six injured in the strikes.

Peshraw Dizayi, a prominent local businessman with a portfolio that included real estate and security services companies, was killed in one of the strikes along with members of his family, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by former Iraqi member of parliament Mashan al-Jabouri, who said that one of the missiles had fallen on Dizayi’s "palace, next to my house, which is under construction on the road to the Salah al-Din resort."

Other regional political figures also confirmed Dizayi's death.

Soon after, a statement from Iran's Revolutionary Guards on state media said it had struck "terrorist operations" including Islamic State targets in Syria "and destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles." Another statement claimed that it had hit a headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Last month, Iran accused Israel of killing a high-ranking Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in an airstrike on a Damascus neighborhood.

An Iraqi security official said Irbil was targeted with "several" ballistic missiles but did not give further details. An official with an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia said 10 missiles fell in the area near the US consulate. He said the missiles were launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

A US defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that had not been made public said the US tracked the missiles, which hit in northern Iraq and northern Syria, and no US facilities were struck or damaged in the attacks. The official said initial indications were that the strike were "reckless and imprecise."

In 2022, Iran claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck in the same area near the sprawling US consulate complex in Irbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard.

The strikes come aIUt a time of heightened tensions in the region and fears of a wider spillover of the ongoing war in Gaza.