Iran’s IRGC Attack on Mossad Spy Base in Erbil: Messages and Strategic Implications

Meanwhile, the attack sent various messages and warnings from Tehran to its enemies. Here are the most important of them: 

IRGC and other Iranian armed forces' full intelligence dominance over enemy moves 

In today's world, collecting data about the enemy's capabilities and movements is an important part of the tasks of the security and defense forces of countries to maintain national security. Possession of reliable and top-secret information about the enemy's infrastructure, operational areas, activities, and plans, as well as capabilities and weaknesses, are all key and a prerequisite for formulating strategy and conducting field operations. 

Meanwhile, while over the past months a massive secret intelligence war was underway between Iran and the Israeli regime to deal blows to the opposite side's economic, security, and geopolitical interests– with the best example being what is called the war of oil tankers and commercial ships–, the Sunday missile strikes bore witness to the Islamic Republic's intelligence dominance. 

This dominance is to an extent that Tehran even had information about the location of Mossad operation rooms in the compound, firing missiles and showing off its power to destroy the spying base from a long distance. The effects of this intelligence superiority will inevitably ruin the entire programs of the Mossad. This Iranian intelligence penetration would render useless all agents, spying sites, and infrastructures used by Tel Aviv in Iraqi Kurdistan region. 

Shadow of threat over centers hosting Mossad 

Another message of the Iranian missile strikes was enlargement of the scope of threat over Mossad spying centers across the region, and particularly near the Iranian borders. As part of the process of normalizing relations with the Arab states, Mossad seeks to gain a foothold next to Iran's borders, especially in the Persian Gulf, in order to somehow reestablish the security balance that is now changing in the favor of Iran. 

As part of these efforts, recently Israel officials said Bahrain granted Mossad an operation site. This site and others in the UAE and Saudi Arabia practically pose threats to the Iranian security interests. The missile strikes sent a resolute message, telling the enemies Iran would not hesitate to eliminate sources of threat and factors seeking to breach its security red lines. Therefore, the states that have fallen in a miscalculation and in Tel Aviv trap by hosting Israeli espionage centers were the addressees of the IRGC missile attacks. 

Transition from strategic tolerance to active resistance 

In the past years, Iran embarked on a policy of tolerance towards the Israeli moves and adventures and boosted the security and military position and might of Tehran-led Axis of Resistance –a block of Iran allies including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestine– as an overriding side in regional equations in a logical movement toward the strategic horizon of restructuring power calculus in West Asia region and eliminating the decades-long Western-set order which rests on the Israeli existence in the region. This Tehran approach triggered moves by Tel Aviv against the Iranian interests in the region. But over the past year, Iran has demonstrated that with changes to regional conditions and containing the power of Western-Israeli camp to create crises within the Resistance bloc's area, the Islamic Republic gradually departs from strategic tolerance and embraces active resistance and preemptive operations.