Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched a blistering missile barrage on the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, striking compounds linked to CIA‑backed Kurdish fighters and rattling one of Washington’s closest partners in the region, security officials say.

Just after midnight, residents of Erbil were jolted awake by air‑raid sirens and thunderous blasts as Fateh‑class ballistic missiles slammed into the city’s outskirts. Fireballs lit up an area near the international airport and a cluster of fortified villas long rumoured to house Western intelligence operatives and elite Kurdish units.

IRGC commanders boasted that “terror nests run by American and Zionist services” had been hit, claiming the strikes killed “key CIA assets” and members of a Kurdish special‑operations force trained by the US. Kurdish officials confirm multiple impacts on a training site and an intelligence compound, reporting dozens of casualties, including several senior field commanders.

Washington has condemned the attack as “an outrageous assault on a US partner and on joint counter‑terror efforts,” while insisting no American personnel were killed. Iraqi Kurdish leaders warn that Tehran is trying to send a brutal message: any group that hosts US covert operations is now fair game for Iran’s missile arsenal.

For civilians in Erbil, the politics matter less than the shock: shattered apartments, burning cars, children pulled from collapsing homes. For strategists in Washington and Tehran, the question is whether this rain of fire on a CIA‑linked enclave is a one‑off warning—or the opening shot in a campaign to drive America’s quiet war out of Kurdistan altogether.