Taher Pourdaranab, labeled a “notorious spy,” was in charge of a Basij base in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province. He was injured on Wednesday by the Zagros Eagles, an armed Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) announced. He died from his injuries two days later in hospital.
Iranian state media reported Pourdaranab was shot by “members of terrorist groups” and was buried in Mahabad on Sunday evening in a ceremony attended by the governor and city officials.
The KDPI is a Kurdish armed opposition party that has waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Zagros Eagles appear to be affiliated with KDPI, though the party denies the connection.
Clashes frequently occur between Kurdish opposition groups and Iranian security forces in western Iran. Iranian forces also periodically shell border areas with the Kurdistan Region.
Two other members of Iran’s Basij paramilitary force were killed last May in a clash with an armed opposition group trying to enter the western city of Urmia from the Iran-Turkish border. Seven of the opposition force members were also killed.
In recent years the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has taken increasingly proactive measures to smother clandestine Kurdish opposition groups by making thousands of kilometers of new dirt roads atop mountain peaks overlooking Kurdish areas, installing thousands of additional troops to seal off its porous western border with Iraq.
Two IRGC guards were killed in clashes in Kurdish areas of western Iran in late April, less than a week after an IRGC commander was killed in an operation carried out by the Zagros Eagles.
Kurdish opposition groups in recent years have used front groups to do their bidding inside Iran to avoid antagonizing the Kurdistan Region authorities. A number of the Iranian Kurdish parties including the KDPI have transferred their bases from populated areas of the Kurdistan Region to the border with Iran.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which has cordial relations with Tehran, has called on armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups not to launch attacks against neighboring countries and Iranian security forces from Kurdistan Region territory.
A senior Iranian security official, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, in August called on Iraq to “take more serious action to expel these groups from Iraqi Kurdistan so that Iran does not have to take preventative measures,” Reuters reported.
