The US and Israel have been recently carrying out political assassinations in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The Islamic State (IS) carried out a massive bombing in Iran during the same period, and there is a connection between the IS and the US.
On December 25, 2023, Reza Mousawi, a senior officer in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Mousawi was close to former IRGC Quds force commander, Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in 2020 by US President Donald Trump in Baghdad. Israeli airstrikes in Syria earlier in December also killed two other Iranian generals.
On January 2, an Israeli drone strike assassinated Salaeh al-Arouri in Beirut, Lebanon along with seven others.
Al-Arouri was the deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, and one of the founding members of Hamas's armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. On October 31, Israeli forces destroyed al-Arouri's house in Aroura near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
On January 3, at least 103 people were killed in twin bombings in Kerman, Iran, with 284 wounded, including children. The crowd there was gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani.
On January 4, the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the two explosions in a statement posted on its affiliate Telegram channels, and said two IS members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd in Kerman.
Experts pointed to the Islamic State branch based in neighboring Afghanistan, known as ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K. Tehran has alleged that ISIS-K has been behind many foiled plots in the last five years.
Most of those arrested were Iranians, Central Asians, or Afghans from the Afghanistan-based affiliate's network.
On January 4, a US airstrike assassinated Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi in central Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi deputy commander was killed on Palestine Street, which was the headquarters of an Iraqi military group, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which has claimed several attacks on US forces.
Hezbollah al-Nujaba falls under the command of the Iraqi army, and had played a vital role in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The group immediately condemned the assassination of al-Saidi, and said the US-Iraqi military agreement had been violated.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that US forces carried out an airstrike in Baghdad, killing a military commander, but excused the killing because al-Saidi was backed by Iran.
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