The US secretly warned Iran that ISIS was preparing to carry out the terrorist attack early this month that killed more than 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings, US officials said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
US officials said the information passed to Iran was specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely that it might have proved useful to Tehran in thwarting the attack on Jan. 3 or at least mitigating the casualty toll.
“Prior to ISIS’s terrorist attack on January 3, 2024, in Kerman, Iran, the US government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders,” a US official said, noting that the US 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 official said.
Iran, however, failed to prevent the suicide bombings that were the bloodiest in Iran since the revolution in 1979.
Iranian officials didn’t respond to the US about the warning, said one American official. It wasn’t clear why the Iranians failed to thwart or blunt the attack, several officials said.
The bombings in Kerman, killed 84 Iranians and wounded hundreds more.
ISIS claimed responsibility after the attack, saying that two of its operatives had detonated explosive belts.
