On September 8, 2018, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched ballistic missiles at the headquarters of Iranian Kurdish parties and surrounding refugee camps in Koya/Koysinjaq (Kurdistan Region of Iraq), violating Iraq’s sovereignty and killing and injuring dozens of civilians—including children. This attack was not merely a “domestic message”; it was a formal declaration of the normalization of cross-border missile warfare.

Seven years later, the region faces a cycle of violence and instability, stretching from Koya to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, and continuing with Iran’s direct missile and drone strikes on Israel in April 2024.

The international community largely remained silent in the face of the Koya attack. The blatant violation of Iraq’s national sovereignty and the targeting of opposition political forces and civilian areas were met not with deterrent action, but with weak statements. This norm-breaking silence increased the cost for Kurdish civilians and signaled to Tehran that cross-border missile and drone use carries no significant consequences. Thus, the pattern of violence was reproduced, weakening collective security from northern Iraq to Syria and Palestine.

The Islamic Republic’s war against the Kurdish people is not merely a border security conflict—it is a war against civilization, democracy, development, and any peaceful solution to the crises of the Middle East. Targeted assassinations, civil repression, and missile/drone attacks on Kurdistan have created a dossier of structural distrust and the erosion of dialogue capacity—in Iran, Iraq, and beyond.

Iran’s regime is not only in conflict with Israel and the Jewish people; it also harms the Palestinian people by instrumentalizing their suffering. When Palestine becomes a tool of regional power politics, any realistic plan for a Palestinian state that ensures Israel’s security while recognizing Palestinian rights becomes hostage to proxy rivalries. The result is a prolonged crisis and a blocked path to development across the region—and, ironically, a just resolution to the Kurdish question becomes even more distant.

The Koya attack (2018) was a warning that went unheeded. On October 7, 2023, Hamas’s assault ushered in a new phase of violence, and in April 2024, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones directly at Israel. These events are not isolated; they share a common logic: the normalization of “missile power projection” as a tool of foreign policy. The more this logic becomes normalized, the higher the cost of peace—and civil society, human rights, and the possibility of compromise are increasingly marginalized.

Wherever missiles replace dialogue, civil society and development are the ultimate losers. If the international community truly seeks to break the cycle of revenge and the balance of terror, it must return to the warnings of seven years ago and enforce the rules—not merely clean up after each crisis. Now is the time for precise naming: state terrorism must be recognized and curbed as a threat to regional peace and stability.