 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On March 13, Iran launched a missile attack on the city of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the strike and said that the targets were locations used by Israel. Media reports said at least one such base used by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was confirmed destroyed in the attack. What was the immediate provocation for the Iranian strike? Rana Khalik of breakthrough news explains. So the context of these Iranian strikes in Erbil is very important. On March 7, two officers from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the IRGC were killed by an Israeli strike outside Syria's capital Damascus. And this isn't new. Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes against Syria since that country's civil war started. And they're usually aimed at what Israel insists are targets related to either Iranian or Lebanese Hezbollah weapon systems that might make their way to either Lebanon or to the Syrian border with Israel. This is what Israel says is the reason behind these ongoing strikes that we often don't hear much about in in the Western press. So normally Iran is silent about these attacks and doesn't respond, or we'll say they're going to respond in due time, right? But after the March 7th attack, the IRGC admitted that they actually like admitted they had lost men and blamed Israel and vowed revenge. And so again, this is after numerous incidents of not just in Syria, but also numerous instances of sabotage against the Iranian civilian nuclear program and assassinations of its top scientists presumed to be conducted by the Israelis. So then on March 13, the IRGC fired missiles at the Kurdish Iraqi city of Erbil, and it claimed that the target was a base for the Mossad, which is Israel's intelligence service. So it is well known that the Israelis have been cooperating with the Berzanis. The Berzanis are the ruling family in Iraqi Kurdistan's Erbil. It's well known that they've been cooperating since the 1960s and have had men stationed there. So some people thought, you know, is this a signal to the Gulf states who are embracing Israel? I've heard a couple people suggest that this was one of the reasons that the Iranians did this to signal to countries like, you know, the UAE and Bahrain that they shouldn't allow Israeli military or intelligence officers to be stationed in their countries or else they'll open themselves up to being targets as the Iranians are saying Erbil has become. And the Emiratis had already made it clear to the Israelis that they wouldn't allow their territory to be used against Iran for this reason, actually. But Bahrain has signaled that it's more open to the Israelis being stationed there. So this might have been also kind of like an extra reason that Iran did this. But the significance of this is that the Iranian response is the first time it struck a target that's inside Iraq since 2020, which is when the Iranians hit the al-Assad base in Anbar province in retaliation for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the Americans inside the Baghdad International Airport. So the attack on Erbil also did land quite close to the U.S. consulate, which is by initially, the initial reports with the U.S. consulate in Erbil was hit. But then the Americans actually came out and denied that the consulate was a target. And, you know, pro-Iranian media in the region claimed that the Erbil attack, again, was retaliation, or they also claimed that the Erbil attack was a retaliation for a February 14 drone strike on a military base in Iran that originated at the Erbil facility that was another one of the regions given. But, you know, at the same time, these are all kinds of things that we're hearing through the media, through the Iranians. We still don't know the actual truth. You know, Kurdistan's government, of course, denies that there were Israelis there and says that this house belonged to, like, the CEO of something called the CAR group, a man called Sheikh Baz. And then you have the New York Times quoting an unnamed U.S. official admitting that the building also served as an Israeli training facility. And then another U.S. official stating that it was a civilian residence only and did not serve as an Israeli training site. So the point of all this is to say that we still don't know what's really going on, except that Iran is not targeting Americans or the Iraqis. And it is showing an increasing willingness to retaliate. And there's also the fact that, you know, the U.S. very quickly did this, the fact that they dismissed this as an attack on the U.S. shows a couple of things that the U.S. maybe is preoccupied right now with other things. And I'm specifically talking about what's going on in Ukraine with Russia. But also the fact that the U.S. really is not interested in any sort of escalation at this time with Iran. The attack on Erbil also drew attention to the politics of the Kurdistan region in Iraq. The power centers of that region have long had a very close relationship with the United States and even Israel. The current prime minister of the Kurdistan region, Masroor Barzani, has been a key player in these relationships. How do we understand the politics of this region and the relationships with other countries? The Barzani is one clan among two that really controls Northern Iraq or, you know, what they call the Karachi, the Kurdistan regional government. They control it from Erbil. And then there's also like a rival family that has control over Salamania, which is in a different part of the Iraqi Kurdish region. And they've been, the Barzani's have been longtime collaborators with the Americans. They believe in, you know, they did believe in like having their own state. And they actually allied with the Americans in the, you know, the occupation of Iraq, basically. And they've had a long time, kind of like unofficial relationship with the Israelis. And part of that is like a bit ideological. They are Kurdish nationalists. And there's like kind of similarity between that and the sort of like Jewish nationalism that you see in Israel and having like an ethno-religious based character. But moreover, I mean, this is just basically like a client of the Americans and a client of imperialism. And Iraq and of course the Americans have had a long time interest in chopping up the Middle East in various ways by weaponizing the sort of ethnic or religious nationalism that various groups tend to believe in and funding it and supporting it and arming it in whatever way they can in order to balkanize various countries. And so in Iraq, for a long time, one of the ways that that manifested was through the sort of like Kurdish nationalist project. But to be, but to be clear, when it comes to the Barzani's at the end of the day, the Barzani clan is about enriching themselves. And that's, that's all it is. And then like much of the politics in Iraq, it's about enriching themselves. It's one of the most corrupt areas of Iraq. I've been there. I've been to northern Iraq. It's one of the most dictatorial areas of Iraq where journalists are like disappeared and killed. It's not this haven of democracy and freedom as like the US and the Western countries have often tried to claim. It's quite the opposite. I would even argue it's like a little kind of Saddam version of Iraq, but under the leadership of the Barzani's. The attacks also came at a time of rising uncertainty about the nuclear deal. Is it possible to analyze this assertion by Iran in light of global developments around the deal? What kind of position is Iran taking with regard to the deal, especially considering the war in Ukraine? You know, I mean, that's a good question. I can't tell you what the Iranians are thinking, but with the nuclear deal happening in the backdrop of this, it does seem as though there's like an emboldened Iran. The Iran feels emboldened to retaliate at this moment. I'm not sure how related that is to the nuclear deal, but what's happening around the nuclear deal right now is interesting because, you know, in the Western press, the Russians are being accused of being the big obstacle to the deal, right? The deal, the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal have been suspended and people are pointing their fingers at the Russians because the Russians were trying to insert a demand that these new sanctions against Russia would impact the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal. And it looks as though so far, if you look at what the Iranians are saying, they've actually made a, they've actually decided that it's more in their interest to, even if they're maybe frustrated with the Russians to stick by the Russians, because from their calculation, the U.S. administration, this administration, as much as Iran would love a nuclear deal, because it would help alleviate some of the worst impact of the sanctions at the moment, it would be good for the Iranian economy. The Biden administration will be the one making that deal. And the Biden administration only has two years left in office. It's going to likely be a Republican administration that takes over if domestic politics in the U.S. continue on the road they're on. Therefore, that likely means that whatever deal is made under this administration will be torn up once again by the next administration. And as we know, the Biden administration has said that they can't guarantee to the Iranians that that won't happen, that the deal won't be torn up by a Republican administration that comes after them. Whereas Putin doesn't seem to be going anywhere. The leadership in Russia is going to be in charge on a longer term basis than the leadership in the U.S. So the Iranians so far seem to be calculating that it behooves them to stay close allies of the Russians, even if it means, you know, a delay or an obstacle to the nuclear deal at the moment, because in the long term, that's going to be a partner. Whereas it's unpredictable what might happen in the U.S. given what happened under Trump would tearing up the deal.