IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Once a palatial mansion, the sprawling home of an Iraqi Kurdish oil tycoon was destroyed by a rocket fire that hit the US consular compound in the northern Iraq city of Erbil earlier this week.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards said it launched the attack last Sunday by firing 12 cruise missiles at what it called the “strategic center” of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two Iranian paramilitaries. participants in the previous week.
Baz Karim Barzinji, CEO of the Iraqi Kurdish oil company KAR group, has denied any links to the Mossad. The missiles destroyed his beautiful home, but he says he is grateful to his family that they were not harmed.
The consulate was undamaged and no casualties were reported in the attack. The United States said it did not believe it was the target. But this shelling marked a significant escalation between the US and Iran. The animosity between longtime enemies has often manifested itself in Iraq, whose government is an ally of both countries.
Barzinji pointed to the large crater where his home office once stood when he took the Associated Press on a tour of the ruins on Friday. The tycoon, his wife and two teenage children were visiting a nearby farm when the attack happened, he said.
The once posh living rooms where government officials conversed with diplomats and other powerful figures are now littered with glass, chunks of concrete and piles of rubbish. The windows and roof have disappeared, the remains of the mansion’s walls are barely standing, the floors are covered with rubble.
“This is my family’s house, all the photos and our things,” he said. “It was terrible”.
His daughter, Ban Karim, tells how she huddled in the garden with her pet dogs as rockets rumbled overhead. “We don’t know if they can see us, we don’t know if they are drones, we don’t know anything about ballistics, about what’s going to happen right now,” she said in English.
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Observers suggest that the timing of the attack was important as world attention is focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq maintains covert ties to Israel through the sale of its oil. The KAR Barzinci Group has built and operates an export pipeline to Ceyhan in Turkey through a joint venture with Russia’s Rosneft.
“This is sheer nonsense that the Iranians are talking about. It could be anything but an Israeli base,” Khiva Osman, an Iraqi Kurdish political scientist, said of the Barzanji villa.
An Iraqi intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the attack also dismissed claims that the house was an Israeli spy center, adding that it was a place where diplomats often hold public meetings.
The attack was Iran’s first attack on Iraqi soil since the January 2020 missile attack on the Ain al-Assad air base, where US troops were stationed, in retaliation for US drone strikes that killed senior Iranian General Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad airport.
“This is a message (of Iran) to their base, to their people. They needed to boost their morale because they had been humiliated for a long time,” said Hamdi Malik, a research fellow at the Washington Institute who specializes in Shiite militias.
Malik believes Sunday’s attack was carefully planned to minimize casualties and not directly harm US interests, but also sent a message to Americans amid stalled nuclear talks between Iran and world powers in Vienna: Next time could be bigger and more dangerous. .
The attack also served as a reminder to Baghdad that talks to form a government are fading and that Muqtada al-Sadr, who won Iraq’s 2021 parliamentary elections, is in danger of excluding Iranian-backed parties by allying with Kurds and Sunnis.
“Iran’s message to Iraqi partners is that no matter who wins the election…. Iraq is our backyard and we can do what we want, when we want,” Malik said.
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Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. Associated Press writer Samya Kullab from Baghdad contributed to this report.