Iran said it carried out a missile strike in northern Iraq and suspended talks on restoring diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, days after international negotiations on the Iranian nuclear deal stalled.
The U.S., which is key to reviving the nuclear deal that offers Iran the prospect of sanctions relief, condemned the early Sunday attack in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it targeted what it called an Israeli “strategic center.”
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Fox News that no one was hurt or killed, denying reports that the U.S. consulate in Erbil was the target. “The strikes were an outrageous violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
Iran also “unilaterally and temporarily” suspended Iraqi-brokered talks with Saudi Arabia on mending diplomatic ties between the two rival powers, Iran’s state-run Nour News reported.
The incidents reflect the fragile web of competing interests that have shaped security in the oil-rich Persian Gulf in recent years as tension over Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to spill over to the region.
Iran and world powers on Friday halted negotiations to restore a 2015 nuclear deal after Russia sought U.S. guarantees that sanctions imposed for its invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t affect its planned partnership with Iran.
The shift scuttled an 11-month diplomatic process that was expected to lift restrictions on Iranian oil exports at a time of surging energy prices and market instability.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said in a tweet on Sunday that Iran would use the “tools of the battlefield” as well as diplomacy to defend its interests, and won’t rely on the West or the East for security.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan signaled Sunday that the nuclear talks are on hold for now.
“As things stand right now, the various negotiators are back home in their capitals and we will have to see what happens in the days ahead with respect to the diplomacy around the nuclear deal,” Sullivan said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Iranian officials have blamed the impasse on the U.S. and avoided addressing Russia’s unexpected intervention.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said 10 precision-guided missiles were fired from northwestern Iran in Sunday’s attack.
The Revolutionary Guard has blamed an Israeli missile attack for killing two of its members near Damascus, Syria, on March 7 and has said it would seek revenge.
