TEHRAN: Iran has accused Iraq-based Kurdish groups of being “involved” in a drone attack last week against a defense ministry site in the central province of Isfahan, Iranian media reported Wednesday.
“Parts of the drones that attacked the workshop complex of the defense ministry in Isfahan, along with explosive materials, were transferred to Iran with the participation and guidance of the Kurdish anti-revolutionary groups based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region,” Nour news agency said.
Iranian authorities reported an “unsuccessful” drone attack late Saturday that targeted a defense ministry “workshop complex” in Isfahan province, home to the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.
An anti-aircraft system destroyed one drone and two others exploded, the defense ministry said, adding that there were no casualties and only minor damage to the site.
Nour charged that Kurdish groups brought the drone parts and explosive materials into Iran from “one of the hardly accessible routes in the northwest” upon “the order of a foreign security service.”
The news agency, considered close to the Islamic republic’s Supreme National Security Council, did not specify which country’s security service it accused of being behind the attack. It said the drone parts were delivered to the “service’s liaison in a border city.”
“The parts and materials have been assembled and used for sabotage in an advanced workshop by trained forces,” Nour said.
Some Western media have blamed the attack on Iran’s arch foe Israel.
Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which Iran has accused of serving Western or Israeli interests in the past.
In November, Iran launched cross-border missile and drone strikes against several of the groups in Iraq, accusing them of stoking the nationwide protests triggered by the death in custody in September of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.
Iran says Iraq-based Kurd groups ‘involved’ in drone attack
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Iran says Iraq-based Kurd groups ‘involved’ in drone attack
- Iranian authorities earlier reported “unsuccessful” drone attack
As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’
- The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran
- “This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Satar Barsirini
SORAN, Iraq: On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.
Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.
Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.
Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.
The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night,” he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometers from the border.
He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.
“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan... We just want to live.”
Irbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.
American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.
But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.
“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.
He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
- ‘Dangerous people’ -
The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkiye.
“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.
The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.
“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.
They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.
“People are afraid,” said Nasr Al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister.”
“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting.”
Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home... and all of a sudden a drone hits your house.”
“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.
- ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ -
Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.
There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.
But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it.”
He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war.”
“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”
Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.
Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.
“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”
