U.S. Looks Into Iraq Attack After Iran Says Israel Killed Colonels in Syria

The U.S. army is monitoring studies of a missile assault close to Washington’s consulate within the northern Iraqi metropolis of Erbil days after two Iranian colonels had been reportedly killed throughout an airstrike in Syria that was blamed on Israel.

A Pentagon spokesperson informed Newsweek that the Protection Division was “trying into the reported assault close to Erbil,” however didn’t present any particulars.

A spokesperson for Iran’s everlasting mission to the United Nations informed Newsweek there was no info to this point on the occasion.

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Authorities’s Directorate Basic of Counter Terrorism reported that 12 ballistic missiles focused close to the U.S. consulate in Erbil and had been launched exterior of Iraq’s borders to the east, the place Iran is positioned.

Information and purported footage of the strike had been shared broadly on social media on Saturday afternoon, early Sunday native time.

Rocket assaults have focused U.S. positions in Iraq for years and have typically drawn U.S. strikes in opposition to pro-Iran militia positions, most just lately ordered by President Joe Biden final June.

However Iran has circuitously fired missiles on U.S. positions since January 2020, days after former President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Drive Main Basic Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad Worldwide Airport in Iraq.

The Revolutionary Guard additionally vowed to take revenge Wednesday after two of it stated two of its colonels had been killed in an Israeli airstrike close to Damascus, the place they had been stated to be supporting the Syrian authorities’s “counterterrorism efforts.”

The pledge was reiterated in a letter despatched by Iran to the U.N. Safety Council the next day.

“Whereas recognizing that the Israeli regime is totally answerable for all the results of those legal acts, and severely warning the regime about taking additional adventuristic and malevolent measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its inherent proper to self-defence, beneath Article 51 of the United Nations Constitution, to reply to such legal act each time it deems acceptable,” the letter learn.

Iran’s semi-official Fars Information Company linked the 2 occasions in Iraq and Syria in a report Saturday, hinting that the timing was not a coincidence, and {that a} coaching middle for Israeli spy company Mossad was the goal. The official Syrian Arab Information Company stated the goal was the U.S. army presence in Iraq.

The Israel Protection Forces didn’t instantly reply to Newsweek’s request for remark.

The newest escalation comes amid a pause in negotiations over efforts to revive U.S. participation in a 2015 nuclear deal deserted by Trump in 2018. Israel has opposed the accord since its inception although events appeared near reaching a long-awaited decision till an abrupt break, apparently prompted by the Russian calls for for assurances that no sanctions would interrupt commerce between Moscow and Tehran because the Kremlin garners political and financial backlash for its struggle in Ukraine.