Iran says its missile strike on Erbil based on legitimate defense

Amir-Abdollahian said in a phone conversation with his Dutch counterpart Hanke Bruins Slot on Friday that in striking the targets in Erbil, Iran sought to “deal effectively” with terrorism in the region.

He said the center of plotting some terrorist attacks in Iran, which killed many innocent Iranian people, was an espionage base in Iraq’s Kurdistan.

The Iranian minister urged the Netherlands to take an appropriate and effective measure to fight terrorism.

The top Iranian diplomat reiterated that Tehran respects Iraq’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Iran, Amir-Abdollahian said, would never compromise on its national security.
He rejected a claim by the Netherlands about the death of a Dutch baby in the IRGC attack on Erbil. Amir-Abdollahian said there was no evidence in that regard.

Earlier on Friday, the Dutch government summoned the Iranian ambassador claiming that a Dutch child of less than one year of age was killed in the Erbil strike.

The IRGC said on January 16 that it had fired barrages of ballistic missiles at Syrian bases of terrorists involved in recent terrorist attacks in Iran, as well as an Israeli espionage center in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

The IRGC said the first missile strike targeted gathering places of commanders and main elements of recent terrorist attacks in the Iranian cities of Kerman and Rask. It said in a later statement that a missile strike had been launched at a main espionage center of the Israeli regime’s Mossad spy agency in the Iraqi Kurdistan. The strike totally destroyed the Mossad center, it said.

During the phone conversation on Friday, the Dutch foreign minister called on Iran and Iraq to “exercise restraint.”