Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) showered the skies of the Kurdistan Region’s Erbil and Sulaimani provinces with ballistic missiles and suicide drones late last month, targeting bases of Kurdish opposition groups, whom they accuse of providing arms to the protesters in the country.
“The Iranian government has investigated and found that a number of the Iranian [Kurdish] opposition parties have interfered in the protests and they accuse them [parties] of inciting chaos, therefore Iran has stressed that the parties must evacuate their headquarters,” Nazim Dabbagh, the representative of the KRG office in Tehran, told Rudaw’s Sirwan Abbas on Sunday, adding that Iran “will consider other options” if the Kurdish armed groups do not comply with Iran’s demands.
The KRG respects the Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups “within the framework of international law” but they “will not allow them [parties] to create problems for Iran,” Dabbagh added.
At least 16 people, including one child, were killed and over 50 injured in the Iranian strikes on the Kurdistan Region, according to data collected by Rudaw.
Nationwide protests erupted in Iran on September 16, condemning the suspicious death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini while in police custody. The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Organization (IHR) said on Tuesday that at least 154 people have been killed during the demonstrations.
Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region have waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
