The United States secretly alerted the Islamic Republic of Iran that the extremist group Islamic State (IS) was plotting an attack earlier this month that killed nearly 100 people in the southeastern city of Kerman, according to US media reports.
The Wall Street Journal on January 25 quoted unnamed US officials as saying that the information passed to Iranian officials was "specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely" that it could have helped Tehran to thwart the attack or at least mitigate the death toll.
A US official told The Associated Press that Washington, which does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran, privately warned the Islamic Republic that the IS group’s affiliate in the region, IS-Khorasan, was preparing to carry out an attack.
US government officials “provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks,” the official added.
Iranian authorities did not immediately comment on the reports.
The IS group claimed responsibility for a pair of coordinated suicide bombings in Kerman on January 3.
The attack targeted a memorial ceremony for Qassem Soleimani, a top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) killed in a 2020 US drone strike.
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