October 14, 2022
In one of the stranger threats by the Islamic Republic, the country’s highest-ranking military officer has vowed to punish the United States for having the nerve to shoot down an Iranian drone that was attacking Iraqi Kurdistan.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqeri, the chief of the Joint Staff, said on September 30: “If the Americans take action against Iranian drones, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond to this hostile action, and we reserve the right to confront and take revenge. If a hostile action against Iran or its national security interests takes place from American bases in neighboring countries, we will definitely respond to those bases.”
The threat received little media attention in either Iran or the United States and the American government did not have any reaction, suggesting it just viewed the threat as more hollow rhetoric.
However, the US silence also telegraphed that the Biden Administration is not interested in any confrontation with Tehran. Governments would normally reply to such an outlandish threat quite vocally.
What’s more, the Iranian drone and rocket strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan killed an American citizen 59-year-old Iranian-born Omar Mahmudzadeh, who had reportedly moved from the US to Iraq in 2019 to join the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), which is listed by Iran as a terrorist organization.
The Americans have said previously that the death of an American citizen at Iranian hands was a red line that would result in a major US response. But the death of Mahmudzadeh has not produced any response, not even verbal.
The Islamic Republic will likely interpret that as a sign that it is free to act against the United States without having to fear retaliation.
The US Central Command announced September 28 that it had shot down an Iranian Mohajer-6 drone near Erbil. It said the drone “appeared as a threat to Centcom forces in the area.” The US has troops stationed at the airport near Erbil. General Baqeri said the US action in shooting down the drone “proves” that the Americans are helping anti-Iranian terrorists and separatists.
The Iranian drone attack that day was just the latest in almost daily drone, rocket and artillery attacks that the Islamic Republic has made on targets inside Iraqi Kurdistan ever since September 24, eight days after violent protests broke out in Iranian Kurdistan following the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurd, while under arrest by Tehran police for a dress code violation.
Iran said it was attacking bases of Iranian Kurdish groups that oppose the Islamic Republic, including the KDPI, the Marxist Komala and the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), a group sponsored by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey. The main Kurdish Iranian opposition groups largely renounced violence in the early 1990s, saying they would henceforth pursue their demands for greater rights through peaceful means.
There is no sign that the violent protests that have erupted in Iranian Kurdistan are being run from Iraqi Kurdistan. They appear to be run locally. But the Iranian Kurdish groups inside Iraq have certainly endorsed the protests and have also called for general strikes.
The first few days, the attacks were confined to areas of Iraqi Kurdistan just over the border from Iran. But subsequently, the Pasdaran began firing rockets and sending drones against targets deep inside Iraqi Kurdistan.
Asso-Hassan Zadeh, a Kurdish Iranian analyst and member of the KDPI, which bore the brunt of the attacks, said Iranian drones frequently hover over the party’s compound in Khoya, some 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Erbil.
Dlawer Ala’Aldeen, who runs the Middle East Research Institute, an Erbil-based think tank, told Al-Monitor that in attacking Kurdish targets in Iraq the Islamic Republic seeks to frame the protests in Iran as foreign-inspired. “As such, their ongoing threats are primarily directed at the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iranian Kurdish opposition, both being defenseless targets. They know that the US adminis-tration’s threshold for engagement is very high. The US has no appetite for military escalations, let alone a war, even after the death of a US citizen in the strikes,” Ala’Aldeen said.
A senior KRG official speaking to Al-Monitor not for attribution said, however, that it sounds like Iran “basically believes its own rhetoric.” The official described a meeting between a KRG leader and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich (when Zarif was still foreign minister) to illustrate his point. “Zarif told us he was ‘concerned’ about American bases in Iraqi Kurdistan,” the official recalled. Zarif said he had “info” that the Americans were airlifting members of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq from Albania to bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, “where they were being trained against Iran.”
The KRG official said, “It was quite difficult for [the KRG leader] to keep a straight face. But he told Zarif that there was ‘nothing secret’ about the base and that anyone could drive past it and easily see what was going on within. The KRG leader assured Zarif that the base was used by coalition forces exclusively for operations against the Islamic State in Syria.
“Our initial instinct was to scoff. But in hindsight, it’s clear that a top Iranian diplomat would not come into a meeting making such claims unless he actually believed them,” the official said.
The initial attacks mainly hit villagers living across the border from Iran. About 600 to 700 families from six villages then fled the area for a refugee camp. Days later, another Iranian attack struck that camp, Kurdish officials said, forcing the villagers to flee again.
The Pasdaran said that on the day the Americans shot down one drone, the Pasdaran had fired tens of drones and 73 missiles at targets in Iraqi Kurdistan. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpur, commander of the Pasdar ground forces, vowed to continue the attacks until “the complete dismemberment of the anti-Iranian and separatist terrorist groups.”
The ongoing attacks finally prompted the Iraqi central government in Baghdad to call in the Iranian ambassador to hear a protest over the military attacks.
The KRG says the ongoing attacks have killed many dozens of people, including both Iraqi Kurdish civilians and Iranian Kurds who are members of the opposition groups.
After 17 days of attacks, the Pasdaran paused their aerial offensive, saying they wanted to give time for the KRG to shut down the various Iranian groups in Iraqi Kurdistan.
But armored vehicles and units of Pasdar ground troops were seen being deployed along the border with the implied threat that an invasion could come next. Political analysts generally thought the Pasdaran would not be allowed by the Supreme Leader to send ground troops across the border because that would send Iran’s already falling respect among Iraqis plummeting to the bottom.
The Islamic Republic quickly sent a message to the UN Security Council saying it had a right to attack across the border under the doctrine of self-defense. But that doctrine applies to repelling an attacker as he is attacking, not retaliating in another country.
The Iraqi Kurd representative in Tehran, Nazem Dabbagh, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) October 9 that the KRG had always wanted to stop the Iranian Kurd groups from harming Iran.
He said it was KRG policy that “Iranian Kurdish opposition groups must not engage in armed activity or training inside Iraqi Kurdistan.” And, he said, “We witnessed the cessation of these groups’ activities for a while until incidents broke out inside Iran in recent days.”
He then said that if the Iranian groups “do not pay attention to the warnings about avoiding armed activities against Iran, the government [meaning the KRG] will definitely take a serious decision about them this time,” a not terribly resounding pledge.
Iran has often leaned on the KRG to do something. And the KRG has often pledged to do something. But the Iranian Kurdish groups have remained in Iraqi Kurdistan for decades.