Iran’s ballistic missile strike targeting the Islamic State group in Syria served both as revenge for attacks on Tehran earlier this month and a warning that Iran could strike Saudi Arabia and U.S. interests in the Mideast, an Iranian general said on Monday.
The launch, which hit Syria’s eastern city of Deir el-Zour on Sunday night, appeared to be Iran’s first missile attack abroad in over 15 years and its first in the Syrian conflict amid its support of embattled President Bashar Assad.
It adds new tensions in a region already unsettled by a long-running feud between Iran and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as a campaign by Arab nations against Qatar.
It also raises questions about how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, which already said it put Iran “on notice” for its ballistic missile tests, will respond.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force in charge of the country’s missile program, said it launched six Zolfaghar ballistic missiles from the western provinces of Kermanshah and Kurdistan. State television footage showed the missiles on truck missile launchers in the daylight before being launched at night.
The missiles flew over Iraq before striking what the Guard called an Islamic State command center and suicide car bomb operation in Deir el-Zour, over 600 km away. The extremists have been trying to fortify their positions in the Syrian city in the face of a U.S.-led coalition onslaught on Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital.
