Mohsen Rezai, head of the Expediency Discernment Council, an influential consultative body appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader, said Riyadh had “set up military bases” in the Kurdistan Region and Pakistan in order to “destabilize” the Islamic Republic.
Speaking to Iranian state television, the former presidential candidate and ex-chief of elite troops warned if Erbil failed to contain the movements of armed Iranian Kurdish groups in the Kurdistan Region, Tehran would “carry out military actions” against the groups and “the training base” backed by the Saudi Arabia in the area.
“The Saudi consulate in Erbil has set up a training base there and established two offices near our borders,” Rezai told Iranian state television on a Saturday evening program and warned if officials in the Kurdistan Region did not “take necessary measures”, the Islamic Republic would “soon carry out [military] annihilation actions against them [Iranian Kurdish groups] and Mr. Barzani would be the one to blame,” Rezai said, referring to Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has officially denied the Iranian accusations in the past and said it has no control over armed groups opposed to the Islamic Republic.
Rezai’s comments came only days after senior Saudi intelligence official Turki al-Faisal attended the annual meeting of the armed Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e -Khalq in Paris last week, prompting angry remarks from Tehran.
Six Kurdish Peshmerga and four Iranian elite troops were killed in a fight that took place in a village near the Kurdish town of Shno on June 16. At least two other deadly standoffs between the two groups have killed dozens more on both sides since April this year.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), considered the main armed Kurdish group in the country, has categorically denied any outside influence over its recent decision to mobilize its forces deeper inside Iran and maintains it seeks “a peaceful solution” to the Kurdish question.
Since mid 1990s, the KDPI and other Iranian Kurdish political groups have been based in remote areas in the Kurdistan Region near the Iranian borders and had suspended their armed campaign for self-rule in the Islamic Republic.
