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About a week after two members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were killed in an Israeli attack on Damascus countryside and Iran threatened revenge, the Revolutionary Guard adopted today, Sunday, a missile attack on areas in the city of Erbil (northern Iraq).

In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards declared responsibility for the attack, which targeted a center, describing it as "the strategic headquarters of hostile Zionist plots and plans" with precision missiles, stressing that the attack came in response to "the recent crimes committed by the Zionist entity, and the prior announcement that Tehran would not leave the entity's crimes and conspiracies unanswered." .

The Revolutionary Guards warned Tel Aviv that any move against Iranian interests would face a decisive and destructive response, describing the country's security and stability as a red line.

celebration of revenge

The Iranian media had celebrated with the announcement of the operation at 1:20 am, as the Iranians had been demanding revenge for their leaders at this time when the former commander of the Quds Force, Lieutenant-General Qassem Soleimani, was liquidated in an American raid near Baghdad International Airport in early 2020.

For its part, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quickly republished the positions of the Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei, a decade ago, in which he said that “the United States of America and the Israeli entity should be well aware that the Iranian response to any aggression will lead to the destruction of the entity and its collapse from Inside".

New base of engagement

The process of targeting the "Israeli headquarters" in Erbil differs from all previous confrontations and secret operations between the Iranian and Israeli sides, as the Revolutionary Guards for the first time took responsibility for the operation, and warned that "the next response to Zionist provocations will be devastating and earthquake," according to the Iranian researcher in military and security affairs. Hussein Delirian.

Delirian explained - in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net - that the adoption of this process means that the Revolutionary Guards want to establish a new base of engagement and send a message that any Israeli operation against Iranian interests will face a stronger and more bitter response.

He added that "the Israeli entity had previously received a heavy blow in the occupied Syrian Golan when it targeted the T-4 military airport in Homs, Syria, in 2018, killing 7 Iranian forces."

The Iranian researcher revealed that two Israeli Mossad headquarters were targeted last night with precision ballistic missiles, stressing that he had news of the presence of a Mossad commander in one of the two headquarters at the moment of the operation, "which indicates that the operation came after accurate Iranian reconnaissance."

Delirian indicated that his country "has developed other plans to respond to any operation that the Israeli entity may undertake against Iranian interests" after targeting the Mossad headquarters in Erbil, adding that it is not excluded that Iran will respond this time inside the occupied Palestinian territories "if the Israeli entity tries to persist in it." in the Middle East,” he said.

He revealed that the Revolutionary Guards used an unspecified number of Fateh-110 missiles in the operation.

The Iraqi authorities spoke of an attack with 12 ballistic missiles (Reuters)

message to the neighborhood

Regarding Iraq’s choice as an arena to respond to the latest Israeli attack on the Damascus countryside, the Iranian expert in military affairs, Muhammad Mahdi Yazdi, says that the Erbil operation is “commensurate with the Zionists’ action against Iranian forces on the territory of a third country.”

Yazdi explained - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that Tehran had warned that it would not tolerate the presence of the elements of the Israeli entity near its borders, stressing that the Erbil operation carried a secondary message to the leaders of the Kurdistan region of Iraq to take the Iranian warning seriously.

He pointed out that his country is collecting accurate information about the presence of Israeli elements in neighboring countries, considering this file one of the red lines related to Iranian national security, adding that Iran "will work to remove the Israeli entity from its borders, and will not allow the Zionists to encircle it," as he described it.

In contrast to the missile attack on the Iraqi base of Ain al-Assad in 2020, where the missiles were launched from Kermanshah (western Iran) - and the words are Yazdi - the choice of an area near the city of Tabriz (northwest of the country) near the Turkish border “sends a message to Turkey, which has recently worked to normalize its relations with the Israeli entity.” It hosted its president, Isaac Herzog.

The Iranian expert attributed the reason for the Revolutionary Guard's adoption of this operation to the recent rise in the number of Israeli operations against Iranian interests, stressing that the Revolutionary Guards statement "inaugurated today a new equation in the face of Israeli ambitions in the region, which states that any new Israeli conspiracy will be met with a definitive response without waiting."