US warned Iran ahead of deadly ISIS suicide bombings which killed 95 people
Though countries don’t have diplomatic relations, US official says message given as part of ‘duty to warn’ governments over potential threats, desire to avoid deaths of innocents
WASHINGTON (AP) — The US government privately warned Iran that the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack before bombings in Kerman earlier this month that killed 95 people, a US official said Thursday.
The official, who was not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the US was following its longstanding policy of a “duty to warn” other governments against potential lethal threats.
The official did not detail how the US, which does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, conveyed the warning about its intelligence on ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, but noted that government officials “provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”
Iranian state media did not acknowledge the US giving Tehran the information, and Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the January 3 attack on Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran. The dual suicide bombing killed at least 95 people and wounded dozens of others attending a commemoration for the late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, who had been killed in a 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad.
In the time since, Iran has been trying to blame the US and Israel for the attack amid Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has launched missile attacks on Iraq and Syria. Iran then launched strikes on nuclear-armed Pakistan, which responded with its own strikes on Iran, further raising tensions in a region inflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that the US had provided the warning to Iran.
ISIS-K was behind the August 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that left 13 US troops and about 170 Afghans dead during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
ISIS-K has thousands of members and is the Taliban’s most bitter enemy and top military threat. The group has continued to carry out attacks in Afghanistan and beyond since the Taliban takeover.
