The U.S. secretly warned the Islamic Republic of Iran earlier this month that ISIS was planning to carry out a terrorist attack inside of the country, a plan that Iran failed to stop, which resulted in the deaths of 84 Iranians with hundreds more being injured.
The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence discovered the plot from one of ISIS’ affiliates, ISIS-K, to conduct suicide bombings in the southeastern town of Kerman.
The information that was relayed to Iran was specific enough that Iran could have stopped the attack or at least significantly reduced its effectiveness.
“Prior to ISIS’s terrorist attack on January 3, 2024, in Kerman, Iran, the U.S. government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders,” a U.S. official said. “The U.S. government followed a longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy that has been implemented across administrations to warn governments against potential lethal threats. We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”
The suicide bombings targeted a large crowd that was commemorating the anniversary of the death of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) Qassem Soleiman, who U.S. forces killed in January 2020.
Iran appears to have ignored the warning from the U.S., the report said, as it failed to stop the attack and instead falsely suggested that the U.S. and Israel were linked to the ISIS terrorists. In an attempt to save face and avoid the wrath of the Iranian people, the top IRGC commander, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, claimed at a funeral for the victims that ISIS “has disappeared nowadays” and that Islamic terrorists “only act as mercenaries” for the U.S. and Israeli, the report said.
ISIS-K has grown significantly stronger in the region thanks to President Joe Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan in 2021 and is now stronger than Al-Qaeda, the report said.
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The report said that America’s longstanding policy is to notify everyone, including adversaries, if they are being targeted by a terrorist group. The exceptions to that rule include “if the intended victims are themselves terrorists or criminals, or if issuing a warning would endanger U.S. or allied government personnel, or intelligence or military operations.”
Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism as it funds Islamic terrorist groups throughout the region that have launched hundreds of attacks against U.S. forces since mid-October.