Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they attacked the spy headquarters of Israel in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region with missile strikes, state media reported late on Monday, while the elite force said they also struck in Syria against the Islamic State.
Iran said the strikes in Iraq destroyed "one of the main espionage headquarters" of Israel in response to what they said were Israeli attacks that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders and members of the Iranian resistance front.
Relations between Iraq and Iran deteriorated sharply following the strikes. Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran for consultations and summoned Iran's chargé d'affaires in Baghdad on Tuesday in protest. Iraqi authorities "will take all legal steps" necessary, including "lodging a complaint with the (UN) Security Council", the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The two countries had fought a bloody war in the 1980s but have since established close ties after Saddam Hussein's rule was toppled in 2003. Iran, which supplies one-third of Iraq's electricity, saw its influence expand drastically as Tehran-backed militias grew in its Shiite-majority neighbor. U.S. sway and the presence of its military assets in Iraq, however, has long been a source of volatility between the two neighbors.
Iran sent shockwaves around the region on Tuesday with a missile strike against what it described as hardline Sunni Muslim militants in southwest Pakistan. Two days later, Pakistan in retaliation attacked what it said were separatist militants in Iran - the first air strike by warplanes on Iranian soil since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Tensions escalated between the two neighbors, with both Iran and Pakistan recalling their ambassadors from the respective capitals. But enmities have soon cooled down. Diplomatic ties were restored following a call between the two countries' foreign ministers, according to a Friday statement by Pakistan's foreign ministry.
Both the heavily-armed neighbors are oftentimes at odds over instability on their frontier. Analysts say Iran's strike in Pakistan was driven by Tehran's efforts to reinforce its internal security rather than its ambitions for the Middle East.
Tuesday's strike was one of Iran's toughest cross-border assaults on the Sunni militant Jaish al-Adl group in Pakistan, which it says has links to Islamic State. Many of Jaish's members previously belonged to a now-defunct militant group known as Jundallah that had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
For Iran, the trigger for the flare-up was a devastating bombing on January 3 that killed nearly 100 people at a ceremony in the southeastern city of Kerman to commemorate commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone in 2020.
Attacks on commercial ships by Yemen's Houthi movement, who say they are acting in protest of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, have imperiled a vital global shipping route through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait that lies between Yemen and Djibouti and connects the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. The disruption has forced more shipping companies to divert around the Horn of Africa, upending supply chains and increasing costs.
The United States' forces have conducted six rounds of strikes targeting Houthi military sites in Yemen in an attempt to stop the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
Following the launch of a U.S.-led naval mission in the region in late December, European Union member states on Tuesday gave initial backing to a similar mission to protect ships from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
Italy, Spain and France stood out last week by not taking part in U.S. and British strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and not signing a statement put out by 10 countries justifying the attacks. The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark signed on to the statement.
The divergence highlights divisions in the West over how to deal with the Iranian-aligned Houthis.
Against the backdrop of escalating cross-border tensions with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, Israel's army chief said on Wednesday the likelihood of all-out conflict breaking out on the country's northern border with Lebanon has become "much higher."
Lebanese officials told Reuters Hezbollah has rebuffed Washington's initial ideas for cooling tit-for-tat fighting with neighboring Israel, such as pulling its fighters further from the border, but remains open to U.S. diplomacy to avoid a ruinous war.
Since October, violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where three Palestinians were killed on January 15 in separate clashes with the Israeli army, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Amid widening tensions across the Middle East, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Saturday four of its "military advisers" had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus.
The Gaza health ministry said on Friday the death toll from more than three months of conflict reached 24,762. More than 1.7 million people - around 75 percent of Gaza's population - are estimated to be displaced, many forced to move repeatedly, according to UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) figures. Many have sought refuge in tents that do little to protect them from the elements and disease.
Israel has launched a major new advance in Khan Younis this week to capture the city, which it says is now the primary base of the Hamas fighters.
Israel's onslaught on Gaza was triggered by Hamas attacks in which around 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, of whom about half are still in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
In one of countless protests in Israel since October 7 to push for action to secure the release of the hostages, some 200 women marched in Tel Aviv on Friday, including one pulled along in a cage. They chanted "Their time is running out, bring them back".
Israeli cabinet minister and former military chief Gadi Eizenkot said a deal would be needed for the hostages to be released alive.
Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, a Gaza-based militant group allied to Hamas, said on Friday an Israeli soldier it was holding captive had been killed in an Israeli air strike, according to a video released by the group to media outlets.
(With input from agencies)