First, where does the conflict between the Islamic State and Iran come from?
“They are enemies par excellence,” summarizes Fabio Merone, who dates the start of the rivalry between the two actors back to 2014. At that time, the world discovered the terrorist group that routed the Iraqi army and moved forward to ‘at the gates of Baghdad. “There is then a call for popular Shiite mobilization in the ideological sense of the word”, in opposition to the Sunni ideology of IS, explains Fabio Merone. Then follows the “key moment” to understand the IS attack in Iran on Wednesday: “the entry on the scene of General Qassem Soleimani”.
Who is he ?
First of all, it must be emphasized that it was at a ceremony in his memory, not far from his grave, that Wednesday’s attacks took place. Killed in January 2020 by a US strike in Iraq, Qassem Soleimani was the head of the Quds Force, Iran’s foreign operations branch.
PHOTO FEDERICO PARRA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Mural honoring the memory of Qassem Soleimani, killed in 2020 by an American strike
He remains a key figure in the Islamic Republic. We also owe him the organization of the “popular mobilization” in 2014 against IS in neighboring Iraq, recalls Fabio Merone. “Qassem Soleimani is a national hero in Iran, but from the point of view of ISIS, he is the man who organized the offensive against him. »
So the attack in Tehran on Wednesday was revenge against Soleimani?
This is, in fact, another chapter in the tensions between IS and Iran, believes Fabio Merone. “IS has attacked Iran in this way many times,” he recalls, adding that some of these attacks also took place in Iraq, in front of mosques or during Shiite religious events. The first attack claimed by ISIS in Iran, in 2017, targeted the seat of Parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, killing 17 people.
So it would not be linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas?
“It is not linked and it is at the same time”, nuance Fabio Merone. You should know that ISIS is not making Palestinian independence a fight, since it aspires to the creation of a global “Islamic State” and therefore without borders. “The Islamic State is not the State of the Palestinians, the Algerians or the Iraqis,” explains Fabio Merone. “But it’s related because it’s obvious that hitting Iran at this time is raising tension. » Because Iran “must respond if it does not want to lose face completely,” he said.
Iran continues to claim that this is the work of “Zionists and the Americans.” For what ?
We must not lose sight of the fact that Wednesday’s attack occurred barely a day after another strike, this one against a Hamas office in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, which killed the number two of the Palestinian movement. , Saleh al-Arouri. Already, Lebanese Hezbolla, an ally of Tehran, has promised to avenge this death attributed by several sources to the Israeli army, in open conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “The attack, it is impossible to prove that it was the Israelis, but there is an Israeli dynamic with the assassination of Arouri,” underlines Fabio Merone. Incapable of preventing attacks on its own soil, the Iranian regime would thus try to look away from its population.
What could be the outcome of these attacks?
“If we follow Tehran’s rhetoric [qui accuse Israël], the Iranians must respond, but how? Iran is a state, it cannot respond with a direct attack, for example by firing missiles at Israel, without risking inflaming the conflict, explains Fabio Merone. Until now, the Islamic Republic has mainly focused on arming its allies in the Shiite “axis of resistance”: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The latter recently attacked several ships heading to Israel while they were transiting the Red Sea. Meanwhile, several voices are being raised in the Islamic Republic to warn of open conflict with Israel, but above all, its American ally. “In the past, Iran has done much less than what it announced it would do,” recalls the researcher.
With The New York Times