The threats from Iran’s chief of the armed forces come as Tehran feels emboldened following the US abandonment of Afghanistan.
“The United States was forced to leave Afghanistan, a defeat and an embarrassment worse than Vietnam, and even leave behind some of the individuals who worked with it,” Mohammad Bagheri, a senior commander from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and chief of staff for the armed forces, told Iran TV on Sunday.
On Friday, the Shanghai Cooperation Council, a Eurasian political, economic and security alliance, accepted Iran as a full member. Tehran described its accession as the “practical defeat” of America’s project to isolate Iran.
The IRGC this month carried out days of bombing of the Kurdistan Region’s border areas, using artillery and airstrikes, including suicide drones, and claiming its target was Iranian Kurdish opposition groups. There are a number of Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region that have units in the mountainous region where the IRGC carried out the strikes.
Bagheri made his threats during a ceremony announcing the appointment of his deputy by Iran’s Supreme Leader. He vowed to expand the operation in northern Iraq, without uttering the word Kurdistan.
“Iraq and the its northern region should not allow the mercenaries of America and the Zionist regime and armed counter-revolutionary groups to have training bases, TV and radio stations, camps, military training and then attack our border regions and assassinate our officers. This is unacceptable for us,” Bagheri said. “The security forces headed by the IRGC will remove these terrorist groups and the operations that have been ongoing for the past two weeks will continue.”
Iran has carried out cross-border operations into the Kurdistan Region since the mid-1990s. Two years before the IRGC targeted US forces based at Iraq’s Ain al-Asad airbase in response to the killing of its most well-known commander Qasem Soleimani, the force fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at the bases of Kurdish opposition groups in Koya, Erbil province, killing at least 16 people including senior members of the Kurdish groups.
Clashes between Kurdish opposition groups and Iranian security forces in recent years have left dozens dead on both sides.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has pledged not to allow the Kurdish groups to send fighters into Iran to target Iranian security forces.
The Kurdish opposition groups deny sending fighters across the border and say their sympathizers and members already inside Iran are behind the attacks on Iranian security forces.
“Targeting these grouplets is our right and the UN charter has given us this right,” Bagheri said, accusing Iraqi and Kurdish officials of not fulfilling their duties to stop attacks launched from their territory.
Bagheri said they are surveilling the Kurdish groups and “if the activities or their presence continues, they will face expansive military operations from the Islamic Republic. It is the legal and logical right of the people of Iran to have secure and peaceful border areas.”
Bagheri did not address the possible adverse effects of expanding such an operation as millions of Iraqis are preparing to go to the polls to elect a new parliament. Iran has said that it wants peace and security in Iraq, but the US accuses Tehran of being behind a slew of drone and rocket attacks on international forces in Iraq, using its proxy Shia militias to target sites including Erbil.
The Kurdish opposition groups consider the IRGC a terrorist organization. They say they suffered no casualties in the recent attacks and claimed to have shot down four drones.
