A week has gone since the ultimatum to the Iraqi government ended, but Iranian officials believe that the agreement is not going as it was anticipated. Chief of General Staff of Iranian Armed Forces General Mohammad Bagheri on the sideline of an annual military parade on Friday said: “What happened during the six-month ultimatum was that they [terrorists] have moved a bit away from our borders. What came in the text of the agreement should be fully implemented. The president asked the armed forces to wait for a few days. We will wait and send supervisory teams to the region to examine if the disarmament has been fulfilled. Afterwards, we will decide an action.”
Nour News website, which is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in an X post reported that despite the active measures taken by the federal government of Iraq to implement Tehran-Baghdad security agreement regarding disarmament and expulsion of anti-Iranian elements from the Kurdistan region, some clauses of this agreement have not been fully implemented, which must be followed up.
Iran had earlier warned that after the end of the six-month deadline, if the terrorist groups are not disarmed, it will resume attacks on the positions of these groups in northern Iraq, and it seems that if the Iraqi government does not take serious action in this regard, resumed IRGC missile strikes on the separatist groups are imminent. Iran’s security officials have repeatedly asserted that Tehran will not tolerate threats from any side to its territorial integrity.
After riots erupted in some Iranian cities in September last year, the separatist and terrorist groups infiltrated the borders of Iran with the intention of destabilizing the country and implementing evil enemy plans, but their plots were immediately detected and thwarted. Tens of assault rifles and ammunition, apparently provided by foreign intelligence agencies, were seized from these Kurdish intrusive elements.
In reaction to the terrorist actions, IRGC struck with over 70 missiles and tens of kamikaze drones positions of Kurdish Democratic Party, a camp in Erbil, and two headquarters in of the Komala in Suleimanya, and Kurdistan Freedom Party, killing a number of Kurdish separatist fighters and destroying part of their installations. With the end of the ultimatum, if Iran decides that the terrorist threats have not diminished, the Iranian armed forces are ready to teach them an unforgettable lesson as the Iranian military officials warn.
What have the Iraqis done?
Although Iran is not satisfied with the security agreement’s implementation process, Iraqi officials claim that all provisions of the bilateral agreement are being implemented well. Recently, the High Committee for the Implementation of the Security Agreement between Iraq and Iran announced the evacuation of the terrorist groups’ headquarters near the border with Iran. According to this statement, all the headquarters were moved to a place far from the border with Iran, and the separatists were disarmed to become refugees, and the border forces of the Iraqi federal government were deployed in the evacuated areas near the border with Iran, and the Iraqi flag was raised there.
“Within the framework of the efforts of the Iraqi Border Guard Command to control the entire borders of this country with neighboring countries, the forces of the 2nd Border Brigade and the 1st Region’s Border Patrol Regiment in association with Kurdish Peshmerga forces recaptured border points between Iran and Iraq after clashes with illegal groups [of Komala and Democratic Party] who had taken control of parts of Erbil province,” the statement read.
In an interview with Al Arabiya news network, Iraq’s President Fuad Hussein said that the government has taken measures based on the agreement with Iran and established 5 camps for armed groups and their families.
“We are committed to agreement with Iran and the armed men handed over their heavy weapons,” he continued.
An informed source in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) told DW news last week that the Democratic Party has abandoned its headquarters in the ‘Democratic Castle’ after three decades.
“The opposition parties have agreed to transfer to the camps that have already been established in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah provinces,” the source further said.
Reports said that these groups destroyed some of their weapons instead of handing them over to the Iraqi government.
Earlier, some Iraqi sources had said that in the first stage, members of the separatist groups will move away from Iran’s borders to a distance of 20 kilometers, so that the process of their complete withdrawal will be completed in the future. Iraqi media reported that the relevant authorities have made a proposal to transfer separatist terrorists from Kurdistan region to Al Anbar province in western Iraq. In this proposal, it is stated that residential complexes under the supervision of Iraqi security, like the Ashraf camp that was built for the Mojadedin Khalgh Organization (MKO), will be built for these groups in Al Anbar province. An area near the town of Al Rutba is planned to be chosen for the construction of these residential areas, and the goal is to move these groups to the farthest point from the borders with Iran.
As the Iraqi officials suggest, separatist elements and their families are still in Kurdistan region and have moved away only a few miles from their headquarters on the border with Iran, and this means that the shadow of threat has not disappeared, and this is not something the Islamic Republic has demanded.
Although the federal Iraqi border guards currently control many parts of the border with Iran, given the sabotage records of the separatist elements, as long as they exist in Kurdistan, the possibility of these groups re-infiltrating the borders to destabilize Iran remains in place. For this reason, Tehran intends to expel terrorist groups to remote areas of Iraq, but its demand is yet to be met.
Kurdish separatist groups have always made moves against Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Their measures over the past four decades included efforts to separate the Kurdish-majority regions in the west of Iran and when they failed, they fled to Iraq for plotting destabilizing actions against Iran. Until last year, Iran’s armed forces relatively tolerated these terrorist groups, however, when the latter ramped up their security threats, Tehran gave them crushing military responses, convincing Baghdad leaders that they need to address Iranian concerns as soon as possible.
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