Iranian Kurdish opposition parties say the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has deployed thousands of troops and heavy weapons to areas near the border with Iraq’s Kurdistan Region in recent weeks, in what they believe is preparation for a possible confrontation with Kurdish fighters amid the escalating conflict between Iran and the United States.
According to leaders from the opposition groups, the reinforcements include special forces, artillery, tanks, missiles and drones. MBN could not independently verify the scale of the deployment or the types of weapons involved, and Iranian authorities have not publicly commented on the claims.
Opposition officials said the buildup includes roughly 3,000 troops from the IRGC’s Saberin Special Forces Brigade, along with units from the Guards’ Ground Forces and Aerospace Force. They said the troops were deployed in phases to border areas over the past several weeks.
Ali Khoshnamak, a senior member of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, told MBN that the specially trained formations are made up largely of loyalists and hardline members of the IRGC.
The officials added that reconnaissance teams affiliated with the Kurdish parties documented the deployment of artillery, multiple rocket launchers and armored vehicles, as well as daily drone surveillance flights over border areas inside Iran and near Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
Leaders of the Kurdish opposition said the composition of the forces and weaponry goes beyond routine border security measures and suggests preparations for a broader military confrontation. The Kurdish parties themselves have not agreed on whether to open a new front inside Iran.
The opposition said its intelligence units observed the IRGC has also deployed tanks, including Zulfiqar and upgraded T-72 models, along with launch platforms for Emad and Fateh missiles and Shahed, Mohajer and Meraj drones.
The drones conduct daily reconnaissance flights over border areas inside Iran and along the frontier with Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, the opposition said. It also said the IRGC has installed surveillance and electronic warfare systems capable of disrupting drones, tracking radar signals and interfering with satellite communications.
The surveillance systems are operated under the direct supervision of Russian officers and advisers, the Kurdish opposition said, adding that Tehran purchased the equipment from Moscow over the past two years.
The size of the deployment suggests the IRGC is preparing for ground operations, Khoshnamak said. He added that Kurdish fighters are capable of engaging Iranian forces if the IRGC launches attacks or begins a ground offensive.
Clashes and Ambushes
According to Iranian Kurdish parties, six fighters from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan were killed in early July in an ambush carried out by the IRGC near the city of Piranshahr in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province.
Another Kurdish grouping, the Kurdistan Free Life Party, said four of its fighters were killed in Mahabad in late June, and the Kurdistan Freedom Party said one of its members was assassinated by Iran in Erbil during the same month.
Since mid-June, opposition parties said, the IRGC has intensified operations against local villagers who spend the summer moving their livestock through the mountainous border region in search of grazing land.
On July 10, a young Kurdish shepherd was shot and killed by IRGC forces while tending his flock near the Iraq-Iran-Turkey border triangle outside the town of Sidakan in Erbil province, they said.
Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an organization that documents border incidents in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, said in a statement that the IRGC transferred the shepherd’s body to a hospital in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province and seized his flock.
A Range of Tactics
Khalil Nadri, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Freedom Party, said Iranian attacks against Kurdish groups and Kurdish areas have continued for years, although their methods have changed over time.
“Despite the continued Iranian attacks against us, the alliance of Kurdish parties opposed to Iran has not yet decided to move into Iran and confront the Islamic Republic,” Nadri told MBN. “But we now need to make that decision together and develop coordinated plans to implement it. The current war presents the best opportunity to do so.”
Nadri said the IRGC is also deploying additional forces, weapons and missiles in the southern province of Khuzestan, along the Persian Gulf near the Iraqi border, and in the southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan Province.
A Political and Military Alliance
On Feb. 22, about a week before the outbreak of the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran, six prominent Iranian Kurdish organizations announced the formation of a political and military alliance opposing the Islamic Republic. The alliance said its objective was to defend what it described as “the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination.”
Kurdish opposition leaders had previously told MBN that the alliance has not yet launched coordinated military operations inside Iran. Its efforts have so far focused on political coordination, while each party continues to conduct its own armed activities and political campaigns against the government.
Hirsh Palani, a member of the foreign diplomatic committee of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said the Kurdish movement’s continued political and military presence over the past 47 years is the main reason for Tehran’s escalating pressure on Kurdish groups.
“The Iranian regime has been unable to remove the Kurds from the political equation because the Kurdish forces are organized,” Palani told Alhurra.
That organization and political presence has raised fears in Tehran that Kurdish groups could receive international backing to challenge the Iranian government.
Since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, Palani said, Iranian authorities have initiated hostilities by attacking Kurdish communities and occupying Kurdish areas. Kurdish forces in Iran have acted primarily in self-defense, he said.
He pointed to Khomeini’s 1979 fatwa declaring what he called a “holy jihad” against the Kurds and describing them as “infidels,” saying it marked the beginning of military campaigns against Kurdish villages, towns and cities that, according to Palani, continue to this day.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
