Iran is now at the end of the second week of protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman tortured and killed while in police custody, after having been arrested by the Morality Police for not wearing her hijab properly. What started as protests in Tehran and the Kurdish areas have now spread to 90 cities across Iran. There are even protests in the Shi’a religious city of Qom. And while they started with birdshot and metal pellets, tear gas and water cannons, the Iranian police are now using live fire to suppress the protesters; more than 100 have been reported killed. Some members of the police, too, have been killed by protesters. The attempts to suppress the largest riots since 2019 have so far failed. Several thousand protesters have been arrested, but the crowds keep increasing. It’s no longer a protest just about women; it’s a challenge to the very existence of the regime. The latest cries send a chill through the regime’s leaders: “Death to the Islamic Republic!” “Death to the Dictator!”
The Iranian government has decided, as part of its strategy to keep its own ten million Kurds from rising in revolt, to focus on attacking Kurds just across the border in northern Iraq. A report on this development is here: “IRGC’s attack on Kurds is revenge for mass protests in Iran – analysis,” by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, September 27, 2022.
The Iranian regime, knowing it can’t attack Western powers who have expressed support for recent protests across the Islamic Republic, has decided to attack Iran’s Kurdish minority in response.
Iran’s decision to target Kurds is not a surprise. It is trying to distract from the murder of Mahsa Amini, the woman whose death at the hands of Iran’s police led to the protests. Amini was a Kurd from western Iran.
If the government attacks Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan too harshly, this would likely whip up even wider protests at the epicenter of the revolt in the streets and those might, in turn, metamorphose into a call for a separate Kurdish state. The Iranian government knows full well that only half the people in Iran are Persians; the remaining 50% of the population consists of Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and Balochis; it wants to suppress any separatist movements early on. For if one separatist movement appears to be succeeding in holding off the Iranian military, the other minority peoples in the country might decide to do the same; the separatist longings of Iran’s minorities could prove contagious. It’s a risk Tehran doesn’t want to take. It will contain the protest in the Kurdish region, but not crush the protesters. Instead, it will try to keep the Kurds in Iraq, who have long enjoyed a great deal of autonomy, from sending weapons, money and, most dangerous of all, separatist ideas, to their fellows in Iran.
Iran’s regime knows that murdering a woman, particularly a woman from a minority group, will lead to anger. This is why Iran’s regime initially tried to downplay the killing, excuse it and even pretend to investigate it. This is because Iran is aware that when a regime targets a woman and murders her that this is a red line for many people in Iran, especially in the Kurdistan region.
Protests began in the Kurdish region. The slogan “woman, life, freedom” has become a rallying cry of the protests in Iran and many have pointed out that this slogan comes from the Kurdish region and has now been taken up more broadly.
The slogan “woman, life, freedom” is one that many media outlets have not noticed. Iran has now decided to target Kurdish groups across the border in Iraq as the protests spread in Iran.
The regime has tried to blame the West for stoking the protests, but the regime can’t attack the West. In addition, the regime is pushing talk of a new Iran deal, and thus can’t attack the West when it wants sanctions relief.
I disagree with the author, Seth Frantzman, that the slogan “woman, life, freedom” has gone unnoticed by many media. They have given it full coverage, and also pointed out that as the protests proceeded, they no longer were limited to slogans about women but became direct challenges to the regime’s survival. The meaning of “Death to the Islamic Republic” and “Death to the Dictator” is unambiguous: we want the regime to collapse.
The Iranian regime is cracking down on the Kurdistan region in Iran. However, it fears that if it cracks down too harshly that it could provoke a more widespread rebellion.
Iran’s regime knows it is hated by groups across Iran, from minority Kurdish, Azeri, Baloch and other groups, to Farsi speakers in Tehran. It can’t fight all the opposition at once. The regime survives by fighting one group at a time. That is how the center survives while keeping the periphery on edge. This is why Iran has been bombarding the Kurdistan autonomous region in Iraq.
Rudaw [a Kurdish media group] in northern Iraq notes that the IRGC-affiliated media Fars News “defined the attacks on the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and Komala, both Kurdish-Iranian opposition groups with bases in the Kurdistan region, as a response to the evil support of the anti-revolutionary elements for the disturbances and actions of thugs and with the aim of punishing and extorting these groups.”
In other words, the Iranian government is trying to portray the widespread protests as largely a Kurdish affair, fomented by Kurds in Iraq who want to weaken the Iranian state. It’s true, the initial cause of the protests was indeed the death of a Kurdish woman, but the protests were never simply a “Kurdish” matter. There have been protests all across Iran by Persians, Azeris, Arabs, and Balochis, as well as Kurds. The first protests were led by women, who ripped off and set fire to their hijabs, but the shouts of the protesters are now about much more than the Morality Police. They now are directed at the miserable state of the economy and the oppressive government. They express complete disgust with, and hate for, the Iranian government. And this is happening all over Iran, in close to 100 cities. This is making Teheran very nervous. The foundations of the state are being shaken.
The mayor of an area called Sidakan said that the shelling has now taken place for three days. This is illegal shelling by Iran attacking what it claims are Kurdish groups across the border. [in Iraq]. The New York Times termed these groups “separatists” in an article, but the groups are opposition groups that have long struggled for Kurdish rights in Iran.
Again, I disagree with Frantzman. The Kurds in Iraq whom the IRGC are shelling are indeed separatists who want to turn their own autonomy into independence, and ideally want the Kurds in Iran to be able to join a newly-created independent Kurdistan. Ever since the Americans placed Iraqi Kurds under their protection, providing air cover so that Saddam Hussein’s planes could not enter the airspace of Kurdish Iran, the Kurds in Iran have enjoyed a large measure of autonomy. They now want more. And they want to help free their fellow Kurds in Iraq from the Persian yoke. That makes the Iraqi Kurds a target of Tehran.
Iran’s Tasnim upped the rhetoric against Kurdish dissident and opposition groups this week, claiming that “the ground forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have started their new round of operations against the positions of terrorist groups in the Kurdistan region of Iraq this [Monday] morning.”…
The IRGC has invaded Iraqi Kurdistan – without permission of Baghdad – in order to crush those Kurds who, from their autonomous region in Iraq, have been helping their fellow Kurds in Iran with both weapons and training.
In 2018, Iran used Fateh 110 missiles to target Kurdish dissidents in Iraq, seeking to wipe out the leadership of KDP-I. It used drones to conduct surveillance at the time. In June, Iran International noted that “Shoresh Haji, a member of the governing committee of the opposition group known as Khabat, that is the Kurdish word for ‘struggle’— told Iran International on Tuesday that he, a former political prisoner, 49, was injured when a bomb that was attached to his car detonated in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq.”
Even four years ago, the IRGC was attempting to assassinate Kurdish dissident leaders in Iraq, as a way to weaken the Kurds in Iran. Now, with the new outbreak of protests in Iranian Kurdistan, they have decided to adopt the same strategy of hitting Iraqi Kurds, in order to avoid adding to an already tense and dangerous situation inside Iran, were the IRGC to violently suppress the Kurds now turning out to protest the killing of Masya Amini. Instead, they are choosing to weaken Iranian Kurdish separatists by attacking their immediate allies, just across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan. They hope thereby to avoid stoking separatist sentiments among Iranian Kurds.
“Over the last several years that have been attempts by Kurdish opposition groups to increase operations in Iran. This has included efforts by KDPI, as well as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) and also Komala.
In August, a report noted that “a group of four members of the Komala party of Iranian Kurdistan who were sent to Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan province, to carry out an organizational mission, was arrested by the forces of the intelligence ministry and Hamzeh Seyyed al-Shohada unit [of the IRGC].”
It should be noted that Iran’s Tasnim also names the Hamzeh Seyyed al-Shohada command center of the IRGC as being linked to the attacks in Iraq. In September 2021, Iran claimed that this unit used artillery to target northern Iraq from Iran’s West Azerbaijan province. Iran also said in May that this IRGC unit had tracked down “terrorists” trying to infiltrate Iran. In August 2019, a member of KDP-I allegedly killed a member of the Iranian IRGC, according to a report at Rudaw and a report by Iran’s regime [sic] media.
Tehran’s fears about increasing Kurdish separatism are well-founded, and the current outcry over the murdered Kurdish woman can only contribute to the fury felt by Iran’s Kurds at the government. Tehran is also right to worry about weapons being transferred from Kurds in Iraq to Kurds in Iran. And at a time when protests in Iranian Kurdistan are already worrisomely large and violent, it makes sense for the IRGC not to court further trouble by violently suppressing the protests of Iran’s Kurds. Instead, they have chosen to attack the Kurds in Iraq, who have been trying to infiltrate Iran’s Kurdistan in order to promote separatism. There is also fear in Tehran that the Iraqi Kurds might succeed in transferring weapons to their fellow Kurds in Iran; the IRGC wants to stop that transfer at its source.
This is the shadow war that has taken place in Iran’s Kurdistan region and across the border. Iran’s decision to target the Kurdish groups is clearly linked to the protests.
The Iranian police and security forces have a lot to contend with. Protests have spread to 90 cities, and have gone from being about hijabs and the Morality Police to a full-throated denunciation of the regime’s repression: “Death to the Dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Because Mahsa Amini was a Kurd, the protests began in Kurdistan, and so far have been larger, and more violent, than elsewhere. Tehran wants to make sure this doesn’t turn into a full-scale revolt by 10 million Iranian Kurds demanding independence. So it has been studiously measured in its repression of the Kurds. At the same time, the IRGC has intelligently chosen to attack the Kurds in Iraq, a warning to them not to try to deliver weapons to fellow Kurds in Iran, or to encourage separatist feelings among them. The IRGC may manage to suppress the Iraqi Kurds, and thereby contain the Kurds in Iran this time, but for how long? And how long will it be before the other restive minorities, the Azeris, the Arabs, and the Balochis, possibly rising up simultaneously, try to break free from their Persian masters? Then it would not be just the regime of the clerics that would be challenged, but the very existence of Iran as a nation-state.
