A ballistic missile attack by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on a site in northern Iraq has prompted U.S. legislators to call on the White House to suspend talks with Tehran on a new nuclear deal.
Al Jazeera reported that the strike on the U.S. consulate in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan autonomous region, came in response to Israeli forces killing two members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria last week. According to official Kurdish sources, the strike caused only material damage.
Official U.S. sources confirmed there were no casualties of the attack, which they called "outrageous".
In a statement, the Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had targeted "Zionists' strategic center of plot and evil acts" in a bid to warn Israel that "the repetition of evil conducts will draw Iran's harsh and devastating response," per a report by Iranian news agency Tasnim.
Following the strike, several U.S. legislators from both parties called on the Biden administration to pull out of the Iran nuclear talks, The Algemeiner reported.
The nuclear talks between Iran and the other signatories to the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, were suspended last week. The suspension came after Russia demanded that the new deal with the U.S. would not affect Iran's trade with Russia amid Western sanctions on Moscow.
Western countries have dismissed the demand as unacceptable, and the United States has said it will not agree to it, Reuters reported on Friday. If the talks collapse as a result of this flare-up of tensions, this could see Iran really get down to business on nuclear weapons, Reuters noted in its report, which could lead to more Western sanctions against Tehran.
This, in turn, would boost international oil prices further and hit European and U.S. consumers harder-an outcome that governments are desperately trying to prevent.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More