Shafaq News- Al-Sulaymaniyah

Al-Sulaymaniyah Governor Haval Abu Bakr on Sunday urged Iran's newly appointed consul to the province to end military strikes and bombardment targeting the Kurdistan Region, as Iranian drone and missile attacks on Iranian Kurdish opposition camps in the area have surpassed 700 documented sovereignty violations since regional tensions escalated.

Abu Bakr received Seyyed Mohammadi Mir Hosseini, the new consul general, stressing that the Kurdistan Region has pursued a policy of neutrality and must not be drawn into regional or international conflict axes.

Al-Sulaymaniyah province shares an extensive mountainous border with Iran's Kurdistan and Kermanshah provinces to the east, running from the Darbandikhan area in the south through the Penjwen and Halabja districts to the Haji Omran crossing in the north, terrain that has historically sheltered the camps of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups.

Several Iranian Kurdish opposition parties —exile organizations that left Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution— have maintained camps in this border zone and across the Kurdistan Region for decades. The most prominent are the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). Tehran has long accused these groups of crossing into Iranian territory to attack its forces and incite unrest in Iran's Kurdish-populated western provinces. The parties describe themselves as political organizations operating in a refugee capacity.

Iranian Strikes And The Regional Toll

The KDPI said Iranian strikes have hit its camps and medical and educational installations on close to 130 separate occasions since February 28.

The Alliance of Iranian Kurdistan Political Parties said in April that more than 150 direct strikes had targeted camps hosting Iranian Kurdish political refugees, killing 21 people, including 10 activists and group members. The alliance condemned the attacks as "an attempt to deflect from Iran's setbacks" and described strikes on consulates, political camps, and civilian areas as "war crimes," urging the United Nations and concerned states to take a firm stance.

Weapons Claims Denied

In April, KDPI official Karim Parwizi rejected remarks by US President Donald Trump, who said in a Fox News interview that Washington had "sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them" during nationwide demonstrations in Iran in January, claiming "the Kurds took the guns." Parwizi told Shafaq News the party "has not received a single weapon from the United States," and that no Kurdish party in eastern Kurdistan —Iran's Kurdish-majority regions— had obtained such support. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein also denied, in a separate television interview, that Iranian opposition groups were conducting any armed activity from Iraqi soil, describing them as present in camps in a refugee capacity.

The 2023 Security Agreement

In 2023, Iraq and Iran signed a security agreement to secure shared borders and curtail armed activity by Iranian Kurdish opposition groups operating from Iraqi territory. The deal has come under strain since the conflict's outbreak. In February, KRG Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani said Tehran had asked Iraqi Kurdistan to do what it could to protect the shared border, a request "the KRG intended to honor out of respect for bilateral relations."