Enlarge / TEHRAN, IRAN – (ARCHIVE): A file photo of September 18, 2016 shows the Quds Force commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Qasem Soleimani during the meeting of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with Revolutionary Guard in Tehran, Iran.
Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
The murder by rockets last night of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Major General Qasem Soleimani and four other senior Iranian officers swore revenge from the Iranian Supreme Leader and other members of the Iranian leadership. Those vows have expressed concerns about both physical and electronic attacks by Iran on the US and other targets – including an extension of the already noted broader attempts at cyber attacks by Iranian state-sponsored hackers.
A defense ministry spokesperson said in a statement about the attack: “Following instructions from the president, the US military has taken decisive defensive measures to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani . General Soleimani was actively planning developing to attack US diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. “
The attack, apparently launched from a drone against the Soleimani motorcade upon leaving Baghdad international airport, would also have killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the Iraqi militia Kata’ib Hezbollah – the US military force. blamed the December 27, 2019, rocket attack on a Peshmerga-operated base that killed an American contractor and injured several US soldiers there as part of a training operation. Soleimani is said to have orchestrated this attack by the Ministry of Defense spokesperson, as well as the protest and attack on the US embassy in Baghdad this week.
Al-Muhandis was also the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces, the militia group summoned to fight the Islamic State. Iraqi government officials, including Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, were furious about the attack. The official spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry said in a Twitter message that the MOD mourned al-Muhandis, “which was tortured last night after an air raid by US planes near Baghdad International Airport with a number of employees of the Popular Mobilization Organization. “
An Al Arabiya report claims that Soleimani was killed by a Hellfire R9X “flying Ginsu” rocket – with the reason that the robbed hand of Soleimani and other remains of victims were “cut into pieces”. But given that multiple vehicles were attacked and the vehicles exploded, that seems unlikely. Soleimani governed much of Iran’s foreign policy and reported directly to Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A smorgasbord of responses
Iran’s options for responding to the United States are only limited by how much Irish leadership wants to escalate brinkmanship. On the low end of the spectrum, Iran has already demonstrated its desire and ability to carry out cyber attacks on US companies. The Ministry of Homeland Security warned last summer of a potential wave of destructive attacks from Iran. Microsoft reported in October that Iranian hackers had focused on a US presidential campaign (which identified Reuters as President Trump’s).
And in December, IBM X-Force reported the discovery of a new Iranian “wiper” malware variant in an attack on companies in an unknown Gulf state. The attack was associated with the Iranian threat group “Oilrig” (also known as APT 34). Another Iranian threat group, APT 33, is targeted by industrial security investigators at industrial control systems in the US through a series of password-spraying attacks against manufacturers, suppliers of industrial equipment, and other companies related to industrial controls. Other attacks were aimed at American energy companies.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and CTO at security company CrowdStrike, provided the most direct possible answers:
Possible Iranian retribution that we could soon see for killing Qassem Suleimani:
* Terrorist attacks on Americans and American interests in Iraq and in the Middle East
* Targeting of Saudi oil and other critical infrastructure (kinetic and cyber) 1/2
– Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) January 3, 2020
However, this type of attack is at the bottom of the potential spectrum of threats. Iran could use its own drones to attack American personnel in Iraq or carry out the same types of attacks that killed hundreds of US members of the service in the last two decades – with improvised explosives, rocket attacks or insider attacks at training facilities. They could close the Strait of Hormuz for tanker traffic and attack ships with drones. They could attack Saudi oil installations with drones, as they would in the past.
It is likely that the reaction will be one or more of these things in a combination. Meanwhile, the US faces the prospect that Iraq’s parliament will kick their troops after what is seen as a second violation of the country’s sovereignty, and there may be a loss of access to information about activities in Iran and Syria . Whatever happens, the coming weeks and months in the region (and possibly elsewhere) are probably ugly and messy.
