Why Iran tried to kill ISIS commanders in Syria with ballistic missiles

• Scores were killed in blasts on January, at a memorial event for a celebrated Iranian military chief.
• ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack.

On January 3 in Kerman, a city in southeastern Iran, large crowds gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the US killing of the top Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander, Qassem Soleimani.

By the day's end of the day, scores of supporters of the rulers of Iran were dead, and hundreds were injured in a twin suicide bombing.

The attack that left nearly 100 dead, Reuters reported, was coordinated to inflict maximum devastation. The first bomber initiated the explosion at the Kerman ceremony, followed by another 20 minutes later as emergency responders and bystanders rushed to aid the victims, the Iranian authorities said.

Tehran vowed revenge for the Kerman attack, and on Monday, the IRGC said it fired four missiles at "perpetrators of terrorist operations in the Islamic Republic, particularly ISIL," in Syria, state media reported, using another acronym for ISIS, per Al Jazeera.

"The Guards identified and destroyed gathering places of their commanders and key elements with a series of ballistic missiles in response to the recent terrorist atrocities in Iran," the IRGC statement said.

ISIS-K, a branch of the terror network based in Afghanistan and central Asia, had claimed responsibility for the fatal cemetery blasts. The militant Sunni Muslim group said on Telegram that two of its members had detonated explosive belts as crowds gathered in Kerman.

The attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran on the Sunni Muslim extremists in Syria were the result of a geo-political vendetta, say experts.

Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow at The Stimson Center and former director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center said that Soleimani was considered a hero by many in Iran for driving ISIS out of Iraq and helping to defeat them in Syria.

"But of course, this has made enemies for him within ISIS," she told Business Insider.

It was the latest in a string of attacks by the ISIS affiliate that has been targeting Iran for five years. The first was a two-pronged operation against the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in the capital, Tehran, in 2017, that left 16 people dead.

US intelligence corroborated ISIS' role. White House spokesman John Kirby said the US was in "no position to doubt Islamic State's claim" that it was responsible, per Reuters.

ISIS plotted a revenge attack because they hated Iran's top commander

The ISIS enmity toward Iran is rooted in the age-old conflict between the two major branches of Islam, the Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Islamic schism stems from a theological dispute over the success of the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century. The two branches also have profound differences over elements of Muslim worship and practice.

While Shia Iran is self-styled as the "Islamic Republic," it is detested by Sunni extremists as a form of apostasy.

This schism is also present in Yemen, where the Iran-backed Shia Houthis rebels have fought a bitter decadelong civil war against the Sunni-dominated government. The US and UK launched military strikes against the Houthi rebels that have been attacking Red Sea shipping after repeated warnings.

Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, which specialized in military operations beyond Iran's borders, personified the hostility of the extremist Sunni militants.

As a result, as well as religious and ideological reasons, Salvin believes that ISIS was motivated to carry out the attacks out of a desire for revenge against Soleimani "for all his efforts to suppress Sunni militants for his activities in Afghanistan, going back to the late 1990s, all the way up through his campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria."

Soleimani was killed by an American drone strike in 2020. Then-President Donald Trump authorized the strike.

The Stimson Center highlighted that the extent of the attacks highlighted an intelligence failure on Iran's part.

Slavin said it's "very easy" to penetrate Afghanistan's "porous" border.

Experts in ISIS-K and Iran believe the Kerman attack highlights ISIS-K's recruitment strategies and its "growing ability to strike declared enemies and undermine regional stability."

They will continue to attempt attacks against Iran "no matter what," Washington Institute for Near East Policy expert, Aaron Zelin, told the VoA.