Iran Missile Attack Kills Kurdish Oil Tycoon

A missile attack carried out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps killed a prominent Kurdish energy businessman at his home in Erbil.

Some outlets note that Peshraw Dizayee, who died in the attack with four family members, had purported ties with Israeli intelligence services and that the attack was in fact an assassination.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps itself said they had struck the “spy quarters” of Israel in Kurdistan, per Reuters, which cited Iraqi state media.

“In response to the recent atrocities of the Zionist regime, causing the killing of commanders of the Guards and the Axis of Resistance ... one of the main Mossad espionage headquarters in Iraq's Kurdistan region was destroyed with ballistic missiles,” the IRGC said in a statement.

“We assure our nation that the Guards' offensive operations will continue until avenging the last drops of martyrs' blood,” the corps also said.

The attack on Dizayee’s house came after members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in Syria, including one senior commander, Reuters noted in its report. The deaths resulted from an Israeli airstrike outside Damascus.

The IRGC attack was condemned by Iraq authorities and the U.S. State Department. The Prime Minister of Kurdistan, Masrour Barzani called it a “crime against the Kurdish people”, According to Reuters, Dizayee had close ties with the Barzani clan that runs the autonomous region.

“We will continue to assess the situation, but initial indications are that this was a reckless and imprecise set of strikes,” a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council said, as quoted by Reuters. “The United States supports the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Iraq,” she added.

Forbes author and Middle East commentator Paul Iddon noted that while maybe reckless, the attack “wasn’t necessarily imprecise”. Iddon noted the accuracy track record for Iranian ballistic missiles and the fact the IRCG had targeted the home of a local tycoon: in 2022, the corps fired missiles at the villa of Baz Karim Barzanji – another Kurdish energy heavyweight who was involved in plans to export natural gas to Turkey.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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