How did Iran tame Kurdish opposition exiled in Iraq?

BAGDAD - After accusing Iranian Kurdish opposition groups of staging cross-border attacks from Iraq and of fuelling banned protests, Iran worked with leaders in Baghdad and Arbil to subdue them.

Who are the Iranian Kurds living in Iraq, and how did the government in Tehran use its influence with Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan to contain the exiled minority?

Who are the Iranian Kurds in Iraq?

After the Islamic republic was established in 1979, thousands of mainly leftist Iranian Kurds sought shelter in neighbouring Iraq.

Kurds on both sides of the mountainous border speak the same dialect, and they share traditions and family ties.

Some Iranian Kurds joined armed opposition groups with the blessing of Iraq's slain dictator Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of Iran who later committed massacres against Kurds from his own country.

There is no official count for the number of Iranian Kurds living in Iraq today, but they are believed to be in their thousands, and their movements have drawn a steady stream of supporters fleeing repression and discrimination.

According to Adel Bakawan, director of the French Research Centre on Iraq, the groups never posed a serious threat to Iran.

"They did pose a threat, but not a serious threat, not a strategic threat, not an existential threat," he told AFP.

How did the alliances shift?

After a US-led coalition toppled Saddam's regime in 2003, his successors in Baghdad became allies of Iran.

Iran has regularly accused Kurdish groups in Iraq of staging cross-border attacks and, since 2022, of fuelling the protests sparked by the death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.

Iran in 2022 repeatedly carried out strikes on armed groups in Kurdistan, before Iraq in March 2023 signed a security agreement with Iran.

Baghdad has since disarmed these groups, relocating them from border areas to camps farther inland.

Speaking on Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani called the neutralisation of the Iranian Kurdish movements a success.

"We have succeeded... in regulating the security situation in the border areas," he said, reiterating Iraq's refusal to allow any acts of aggression to be launched against Iran from its territory.

What about the Iraqi Kurds?

Traditional allies of the United States, Iraqi Kurdistan's regional leaders have in recent months revamped their own ties with Iran, with officials from both sides engaging in visits.

Regional president Nechirvan Barzani and his cousin, prime minister Masrour Barzani, both attended the funeral of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi after his death in a helicopter crash in May.

On Thursday, Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, visited Iraqi Kurdistan's capital Arbil as part of his first foreign visit since taking office.

He was the first Iranian president to do so, and Nechirvan hailed the visit as "historic".

On Wednesday, at the presidential palace in Baghdad, Pezeshkian told regional broadcaster Rudaw in broken Kurdish: "We have good relations with Kurdistan and we are working on further improving them."

What next for Iranian Kurds?

With neither self-serving patrons nor allies left in Iraq, Iran's Kurds face an uncertain future.

Arbil's rapprochement with Tehran indicates, in part, the impact of the United States' shrinking role in the Middle East, Bakawan said.

"We are now heading towards a normalisation" of ties between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran, he said.

Speaking to Iranian state television on Wednesday, Iraq's national security chief Qassem al-Araji said: "After disarming the separatist groups, the Iraqi government closed down 77 of their bases near the Iranian border and transferred these people to six camps."

Without giving details, he also said there were plans in place "for their departure from Iraq to a third country, that does not pose a threat to Iran and Iraq". - AFP