A few days ago, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter was alive with rumors that US interests in Erbil were under attack, not by Iran’s network of militia inside Iraq, but by the IRGC itself, using ballistic missiles. Not only that, the IRGC quickly claimed the attack through Iranian semi-official state media, delirious netizens imagined.

A quick fact check revealed a couple of notables. First, some of the videos shared by “verified” social media accounts (in the Musk era, blue verification badges are a contrarian indicator vis-à-vis veracity) were in fact videos of years-old incidents. Second, the Western source for the contention that Iran claimed the strikes was Reuters, and when you actually read the Reuters item, it indicated only that Tehran acknowledged targeting something in and around Erbil, but certainly not US interests.

Although the US and Israel carried out a series of assassinations against high-profile individuals from Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” recently, it was exceptionally unlikely (bordering on the ludicrous) that the IRGC would respond by firing missiles at US assets. Iran did strike a US base in Iraq in retaliation for the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani in January of 2020, but that was performative — a symbolic gesture that ended in humiliation and catastrophe when the IRGC accidentally shot down a passenger plane after mistaking it for a US cruise missile.

In short, it was immediately obvious to anyone possessed even of a glancing familiarity with regional dynamics, that Iran’s strikes around Erbil were a token retaliatory gesture conducted mostly for a domestic audience to prove something about the regime’s willingness and capacity to respond to the January 3 bombings in Kerman, where dozens were killed during a memorial procession for Soleimani. Although Tehran blamed Israel, ISIS subsequently claimed the attacks, consistent with the specifics of the incident which plainly pointed to Sunni terrorism, not Mossad.

Iran alluded to the presence of an Israeli intelligence hub in Erbil — which is plausible — but it didn’t matter. Iran has a backup excuse: The IRGC made a habit in recent years of targeting Kurdistan, ostensibly to punish separatists for fomenting domestic discord in Iran. That’s not new. So if there’s no Mossad outpost in the city, then maybe there are scheming separatists.

Iraq was irritated, but it’s an Iranian client state in many respects. The IRGC strikes marked the second time this month that the country’s sovereignty was violated. A US drone killed a militia commander loyal to the Quds in Baghdad on January 4.

Iran also targeted ISIS in Syria and Jaish al-Adl in Pakistan. Tehran made a show of celebrating the strikes (they hung up banners in the capital and the defense minister declared Iran “a missile power in the world” fully prepared to strike the country’s enemies “wherever they want to threaten us”), but the reality is as simple as it is obvious: The regime in Tehran wanted to stage a spectacle in a bid to reassure Iranians after the deadliest attack on the country since the revolution (the bombing at Soleimani’s grave site) while minimizing the odds of retaliatory military action.

Consider where and who the IRGC attacked: The capital of a semi-autonomous region in a client state (Erbil in Iraq), a universally loathed, “always fair game” target in another client state (ISIS in Syria) and an obscure group of Sunni militants in Baluchistan (Jaish al-Adl, an ethnic movement in Pakistan). Self-evidently, Bashar al-Assad wasn’t going to object to Iranian missiles landing in Syria. Iraq might protest, but the government’s full of Iranian puppets and what was Kurdistan going to do? The only risk was Pakistan — they might respond, if only to show you can’t unilaterally bomb a nuclear power with impunity.

On Thursday, Pakistan did indeed respond. The military hit half a dozen targets (at least) around 30 miles inside Iran with warplanes, drones and rockets. The target appeared to be Baluch separatists, which Pakistan routinely claims find shelter on the Iranian side of the border.

If this sounds tragically farcical to you, you’re not wrong. This is, in short, the Israel-Hamas war metastasizing in an unexpected way: Manifesting in state-on-state conflict predicated on the instrumentalization of an unrelated dispute tied to recriminations over a long-simmering insurgency in Baluchistan which has, at various intervals, threatened both Pakistani and Iranian security.

Pakistan on Thursday signaled this needn’t go any further. Iran, the Pakistani military said, is a “brotherly country.” If there are bilateral concerns, there’s no reason they can’t be addressed through “dialogue and cooperation.”

Admittedly, “dialogue and cooperation” aren’t popular problem-solving techniques in the 2020s, but as more than a few observers (not to mention officials from both Iran and Pakistan) noted, neither country has any incentive at all to escalate the situation further. Pakistan has enough to worry about internally, and Iran’s already fighting multiple wars by proxy.

Suffice to say all of this is yet another testament to the notion that geopolitical concerns are front and center in 2024, and the potential for deadly miscalculations remains perilously high. Civilians and children were reportedly killed in Iran’s strikes on Erbil and Pakistan earlier this week, and also in Pakistan’s strikes inside Iran on Thursday.