Eli Lake, Columnist

Iran’s Callous, Deadly Message

The regime launched a missile strike against innocent Iraqi Kurds in order to make a point to America.

September 16, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Marking where shrapnel hit a wall.
Photographer: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

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When a regional power wants to assert itself and intimidate its rivals, it has several options: Stage a military exercise, test a missile, maybe even have a high-ranking general deliver a threatening speech. Rarely does signaling deterrence mean killing innocents.

Yet this is exactly what Iran did earlier this month when it launched a barrage of missiles at the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, or KDPI, during a meeting of its 21-member central committee. Six of its members were killed, according to one of the survivors, Khalid Azizi, a member of the committee.