Iran and Iraq

• Iran reported around 100 killed in a pair of blasts near a ceremony in Kerman commemorating the fourth anniversary of the death of Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike.
• Iranian media initially said the blasts "were detonated remotely by terrorists," but now most Iranian officials are blaming them on suicide bombers - although some are pointing fingers at Iran's two usual bogeymen, the U.S. and Israel.
• Analysts and intelligence officers say it looks more like a terrorist attack by Islamic State or Balochi separatists than one the U.S. or Israel would carry out at a moment of heightened tensions with Iranian proxies - and with the risk of igniting war with Iran.
• That analysis may not matter to Iranian officials angry and embarrassed about their failure to prevent such a lethal attack - the deadliest one the country has seen since the 1979 revolution - and desperate for a scapegoat.
• Separately (though hardline Iranian officials may not believe it's unrelated), it seems the U.S. was actually behind a strike in East Baghdad that killed the commander and two other leaders of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN), an Iranian proxy group operating in Iraq and Syria that has targeted U.S. troops in the region.
• The Iraqi government - which HHN's founder previously vowed to overthrow if Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei ordered him to - fumed at the U.S. incursion, calling it a "flagrant violation of the sovereignty and security of Iraq” and “no different from a terrorist act."

• The NYT pointed out that Saleh al-Arouri - the deputy leader of Hamas who was killed in a (likely) Israeli drone strike in Lebanon this week - was also Hamas's "de facto ambassador to Iran and Hezbollah.
• That means his death may strain Hamas's links with its backers in Iran and fellow Iranian proxies in Hezbollah...although Hamas has often proven itself able to rebuild its leadership and key foreign links after top officials like al-Arouri are eliminated.

• Meanwhile, the U.S. and 12 of its allies ordered Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea or face unspecified "consequences."

• Ukraine and Russia concluded their biggest prisoner swap of the war so far: 234 Russian soldiers were released in exchange for 224 Ukrainian soldiers and six Ukrainian civilians.

• DRC's main opposition leaders declined to contest election results in courts they don't trust to rule impartially, but one opposition candidate - Théodore Ngoy, who came in last among 25 candidates - finally lodged an appeal just before last night's deadline. The Constitutional Court now has seven days to review his appeal and issue a decision.

• Somalia is asking the African Union to intervene to block Somaliland's deal granting Ethiopia port access in Berbera, but - as The Economist writes - "the AU, much like Somalia itself, may find it is powerless to do much about it."

• China's BYD sold over 525,000 electric vehicles in Q4, surpassing Tesla (485,000) for the first time.
• BYD makes affordable ($30k) models that a captured dominant market share in China, but competition with rival carmakers in the U.S. and Europe is leading to rising tariffs on BYD's cars outside of China and a decline in BYD sales abroad (Bloomberg recently wrote that BYD's "[m]anagement views the US as virtually off-limits due to the escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing").