ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish operatives affiliated with one of the main opposition groups claimed on Tuesday to have killed an intelligence officer in western Iran, less than two weeks after top Iranian military officials threatened to carry out operations against these groups inside the Kurdistan Region. The official twitter account of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) tweeted about a military operation carried out by a shadowy group known as the Zagros Eagles, believed to be affiliated with the KDPI. The operation targeted an agent of the Ministry of Intelligence (Ettela’at in Persian) who was allegedly responsible for a number of assassinations of Kurdish activists. “In an military operation by the Zagros Eagles an agent of #Iran’s intelligence agency Ettela'at by the name of Khidir Piotipenah was killed,” the KDPI tweeted. “Pirotipenah was responsible for the assassination of several Kurdish activists and freedom fighters.” KDPI did not elaborate on the assassination, but the human rights organization Hengaw said a staff member of the intelligence ministry in Piranshahr, West Azerbaijan province was assassinated. Hengaw said they have received information that the assassination was “carried out by unidentified individuals” in the center of Piranshahr city on Tuesday and the individual killed was named as Khidir Piotipenah. Iranian media affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have not immediately reported on the death. The assassination, if confirmed, could anger the Iranian military establishment including the IRGC which is responsible for the security situation in Kurdish areas. Last month, the IRGC carried out days of bombing of the Kurdistan Region’s border areas, claiming to target Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff for the Iranian armed forces, threatened on September 19 to expand operations if Kurdish and Iraqi authorities did not take steps to restrain the opposition groups. “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.” A number of Kurdish opposition groups including the KDPI are based in the Kurdistan Region where they operate camps, have TV and radio stations, and, based on their social media posts, regularly carry out armed training of new recruits. 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. 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.
