A Kurdish separatist group has claimed it has mounted an ‘armed operation’ to protect protesters in Iran.

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — An Iranian Kurdish separatist group based in Iraq says it has attacked Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests.

Members of the armed wing of the Kurdistan National Army, the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, “have played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to protect the protesters when necessary,” PAK representative Zwansher Rafati told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Iranian media have accused the group and other Kurdish factions of attacking security forces.

Iranian activists say more than 2,797 people have died in government crackdowns on the latest wave of nationwide protests.

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found safe haven in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran.

Iran has occasionally launched attacks on the groups’ sites in Iraq but has not done so since the recent outbreak of protests.

PAK is the first of the groups to claim armed action since the protests and crackdown began.

“When we learned that the IRGC fired directly at the protesters, our fighters in Ilam, Kermanshah and Firuzkuh responded with armed action and inflicted heavy losses on regime forces,” Rafati said in an interview in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

PAK has also claimed several attacks online and posted videos of what it said were operations against IRGC targets, sometimes including grainy videos showing gunfire or explosions and burning buildings. The AP could not confirm the extent of damage or the impact of the attack.

Rafati said the attacks were launched by members of the National Army, a group of the Kurdistan military wing based inside Iran. The group had not sent any troops from Iraq, but Iran was expected to attack PAK bases in Iraq in retaliation for its actions, he added.

He said PAK has been helping dozens of Iranians who fled to Iraq’s Kurdish region since the crackdown on protests began.

sensitive political situation

The PAK claim could put Iraqi officials in a sensitive position with Tehran — which holds significant influence in its neighbor — about the group’s ongoing presence in northern Iraq.

Iraq struck a deal with Iran in 2023 to disarm Kurdish Iranian dissident groups and move them from their bases near border areas to camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were closed and movement within Iraq was restricted, but the groups remained active.

During the Israel-Iran war last year, the PAK and other Kurdish dissident groups began to organize politically if the authorities in Tehran lost their grip on power but did not launch armed operations.

A PAK spokesman told the AP at the time that premature armed mobilization could threaten the fragile security of Kurdish groups and Kurdish areas in Iraq and across the border with Iran.

A decade ago, the Pakistani military received training from the US military while taking part in the fight against the Islamic State militant group after seizing large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Ironically, at that time PAK found itself allied with Iran-backed Shia Iraqi militias fighting IS.

At the time, PAK received funding from Iraq’s Kurdish regional government, but now says most of its funding comes from Iran and its supporters in the diaspora.

Iran has blamed the Kurdish group

During recent protests, Iranian state media have repeatedly referred to protesters as “terrorists” and accused them of receiving support from the US and Israel, without providing evidence to support the claim.

Iran’s state television broadcast surveillance video of a group of men in baggy pants among Kurds, firing pistols in Iran’s western Kurdish region. It also published pictures of weapons recovered in the area.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdish groups including PAK “have played an active role in inciting these movements by issuing coordinated statements and messages.” It said that “groups based in northern Iraq have passed the phase of psychological warfare and media operations and entered the field phase.”

The semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported on January 10 that another group – the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK – had killed eight Guard members in Kermanshah and that a PJAK sniper had killed a police officer in Ilam province. PJAK has not claimed any armed operations during the agitation.

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Associated Press writer John Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.