IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — An Iranian Kurdish separatist group in Iraq says it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests.
Members of the Kurdistan National Army, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, have “played a role in the protests both through financial support and armed operations to defend the protesters when needed,” PAK spokesman Jwansher Rafati told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Iranian media have previously accused the group and other Kurdish factions of attacking security forces.
Iranian activists say more than 2,797 people have been killed in the government’s crackdown on a recent wave of nationwide protests.
A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissidents or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran.
Iran has occasionally launched strikes on the groups’ sites in Iraq, but has not done so since the recent protests broke out.
PAK is the first of the groups to claim armed operations since the protests and crackdown began.
“When we learned that the IRGC was directly shooting at protesters, our fighters in Ilam, Kermanshah and Firuzkuh responded with armed operations and inflicted significant damage on regime forces,” Rafati said in an interview in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
PAK also claimed a number of attacks online and posted videos of what it said were operations against IRGC targets, sometimes accompanied by grainy videos showing gunfire or explosions and burning buildings. The AP could not confirm the extent of the damage or the impact of the attacks.
Rafati said the attacks were launched by members of the group’s Iran-based Kurdistan National Army military wing. The group has not sent any forces from Iraq, but anticipates that Iran may strike PAK bases in Iraq in retaliation for its operations, he added.
He said PAK has provided support to dozens of Iranians who have fled to the Kurdish area of Iraq since the crackdown on protests began.
Sensitive political situation
PAK’s claims could put Iraqi authorities in a sensitive situation with Tehran — which wields significant influence over its neighbor — over the group’s continued presence in northern Iraq.
Iraq reached an agreement with Iran in 2023 to disarm Iranian Kurdish dissident groups and move them from their bases near border areas to camps designated by Baghdad. Bases were closed and movement into Iraq was restricted, but the groups remained active.
During last year’s Israel-Iran war, PAK and other Kurdish dissident groups began to organize politically in case the authorities in Tehran should lose power, but did not launch armed operations.
A PAK spokesman told the AP at the time that premature military mobilization could endanger Kurdish groups and the fragile security of Kurdish areas, both in Iraq and across the border in Iran.
A decade ago, PAK forces received training from the US military as they took part in the fight against the Islamic State militant group after it swept through Iraq and Syria, seizing large swaths of territory.
Ironically, the PAK at the time found itself allied with Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias that were also fighting IS.
At the time, PAK received funding from Iraq’s Kurdish regional government, but now says most of its funding comes from its supporters in Iran and the diaspora.
Iran accuses Kurdish groups
During the recent protests, Iranian state media repeatedly referred to the demonstrators as “terrorists” and claimed they received support from America and Israel, without providing evidence to support the claim.
Iranian state television aired what appeared to be surveillance footage of a group of men wearing baggy trousers common among Kurds firing pistols in Iran’s western Kurdish region. It also published images of weapons seized in the area.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdish groups, including the PAK, “played an active role in inciting these movements by issuing coordinated statements and messages.” It said that “groups based in northern Iraq have moved beyond the stage of psychological warfare and media operations and into the field phase.”
The semi-official Fars news agency, which is also close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported on January 10 that another group – the Party for Free Life of Kurdistan, or PJAK – killed eight Guard members in Kermanshah and that a PJAK sniper killed a police officer in Ilam province. PJAK did not support any armed operations during the protests.
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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.