The US government privately warned Iran that the Islamic State affiliate in the region (IS-KP) was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack ahead of the suicide bombings that killed and injured dozens of people in the southeastern city of Kerman.
A US official told the Wall Street Journal that the information shared with Iran included sufficient detail about the location and was timely enough to potentially help Tehran in thwarting the explosions. Despite receiving the warning a week before the incident, the Islamic Republic ignored the warning and failed to prevent the explosions from happening.
The official did not elaborate on how the US, a country without diplomatic relations with Iran, communicated the warning about its intelligence on the attack. However, the official said that “The U.S. government followed a longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy that has been implemented across administrations to warn governments against potential lethal threats. We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”
The Islamic State affiliate in the region, Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP), claimed responsibility for the twin blasts that occurred within a 20-minute interval on January 3 in Kerman city, situated about 510 miles away from Iran’s capital, Tehran.
The attack was the deadliest in the history of the Islamic Republic, claimed 95 lives including 12 Afghan citizens, and injured nearly 300. It occurred during a commemoration for the late General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, who was killed in a 2020 US drone strike near Baghdad airport in Iraq.
Earlier, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence said that it had killed two individuals linked to the attacks. The ministry also reported the arrest of 35 individuals in connection to the incident, disclosing that the mastermind behind the attack was a Tajikistani national who illegally entered Iran through its southeastern border and departed the country two days before the incident. As per the ministry, one of the attackers, who also held Tajikistani citizenship, underwent training by IS-KP in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province before entering Iran.
IS-KP, with thousands of fighters in Afghanistan, is regarded as the Taliban’s most formidable enemy and the primary military threat. Since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, the group has persistently conducted attacks, primarily targeting the Hazara ethnic group in their mosques, schools, and workplaces in the capital Kabul, and many other provinces. IS-KP was also responsible for the suicide attack at Kabul International Airport in August 2021, which killed 13 US service members and approximately 170 Afghan citizens during the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Initially, Iranian officials attempted to link the US and Israel to the Kerman attack, aiming to connect the incident with the wider tension in the Middle East arising from the Israel-Hamas ongoing war. The Iranian president’s political deputy, Mohammad Jamshidi, said “The responsibility for this crime lies with the US and Zionist regimes (Israel) and terrorism is just a tool.”
Following the IS-KP bombing in Kerman, Iran targeted sites in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan. The strike in Pakistan led to a swift escalation in diplomatic and military tensions. Islamabad retaliated by launching missiles into Iranian territory, claiming they had struck Baluch separatists in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province. Both countries decided to downgrade their diplomatic ties by recalling their ambassador back to their capitals. However, they have recently announced plans to re-normalize diplomatic ties by soon reinstating their ambassadors to their respective roles.
