IRGC missile attack on Erbil a tool to maintain Tehran influence in Baghdad: PM Barzani

Fazel Hawramy

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Tuesday accused Iran of using its ballistic missiles as a political tool to maintain its dwindling influence in Baghdad and to prevent the Kurdistan Region from becoming an energy hub that could fill the gaps in the international energy market as a result of the war in Ukraine.

Speaking in a plenary session at the World Government Forum in Dubai, PM Barzani was asked about Iran’s malign activities in the Middle East and March 13 missile attack on Erbil.

“We understand that this is a pressure on us as we are moving forward to form the new government in Iraq , the formation of the government has not been the way, you know, they [Iranians] wanted,” said PM Barzani.

“So this is a political pressure on the members of the Alliance to basically withdraw from the Alliance and to let them increase or at least maintain their [Iran] influence that they have enjoyed throughout these years in Iraq,” he added, referring to the Save the Homeland Alliance, which includes the main winners of October’s elections - Sadrist bloc among Shiites, the Sunni Taqadum, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) among Kurds.

Millions of Iraqis went to the polls in an early vote, hoping to elect a new government that would end nearly two decades of endemic corruption and mismanagement of the economy. However the kingmakers of the election have struggled to form the national majoritarian government they have desired thanks to the opposition from Iran-backed Coordination Framework and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The lack of meaningful progress in the formation of the government has allowed even more interference from outside powers including Iran. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went as far as admitting that the foreign interference in this process of government formation has been the highest since 2003. 

“We have been victims of this sort of aggression for a long time from different sides and different players, this time the rocket attack against Erbil was unjustified, the allegations were baseless … they attacked the residence of a private citizen and businessman and then to justify their actions, they were saying they hit the base of Israelis which is not true,” PM Barzani stated adding that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has called for an international investigation and has invited Tehran to visit and inspect the site of the attack.

Iran fired a dozen ballistic missiles targeting the residence of the CEO and founder of the Iraqi-Kurdish oil company KAR Group Baz Karim Barzinji, who built the Kurdistan independent pipeline to Turkey.

Iranian officials have given contradictory statements about the missile attack in Erbil as they initially claimed that the attack was against an Israeli base in the city, but the head of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops (IRGC) Hossein Salami, recently implied that the attack was in retaliation for the killing of two IRGC Quds Force commanders in Syria in an Israeli airstrike on March 7. 

Other panelists were also critical of Iran's activities in the wider region, specifically the drone and missile attacks on oil facilities and civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

“Who has been throwing these rockets and missiles at us and at Abu Dhabi? Who is financing? Who is training? Who is supplying these weaponry? It is a member of OPEC, I leave it for your imagination,” the Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud, who was taking part in the same plenary session as PM Barzani, said. 

Tehran is concerned about the division within the Shiite bloc following Muqtada al-Sadr’s tripartite alliance with the Sunnis and is worried that Shiite may lose the hegemony they have wielded in Iraqi politics since 2003.

While the alliance succeeded in electing Mohammed al-Halbousi as the speaker of parliament in early January in a chaotic session, it failed to entice 220 MPs to attend the parliamentary session to obtain legal quorum in order to elect a president earlier this week. The next session is expected to take place on Wednesday. 

During the plenary session, PM Barzani also hailed the development in the oil and gas sector in the Kurdistan Region saying there was potential to fill some of the gaps left behind by the Ukraine war and this could be another reason why Iranians launched missiles in Erbil.

“We are one of the regions that are flourishing and are trying to become a main player to provide energy not just to the region but hopefully to Europe and to the rest of the world as we are discovering more oil and gas fields and we are trying to develop those areas and this is something that may not be in the interest of the Iranians in this case,” Barzani said.

“We are trying to at least provide some of the shortages that exist in the world, now the question is, are we allowed to go and do that, because we see that not only the rocket trying to stop us but there are also institutions [in Baghdad] that have been manipulated that are trying to stop us from doing what we think would be in the best interest far region, the rest of Iraq and also the world,” he added.

The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court in February ruled against the Kurdistan Region’s oil and gas law, deeming it unconstitutional.  The Kurds described the ruling which was brought before the court in 2012 as unconstitional.

During the summit, Barzani once again referred to the decision as “political,” saying it was “made by political appointees to basically put pressure on us at this juncture.”