IRGC commander in leaked audio: Iran bombed Turkish forces in Iraq

Shafaq News/ Anti-regime Iranian website on Friday shared a leaked audio recording of a senior Iranian commander suggesting Tehran's involvement in an attack on a Turkish military base in Iraq.

In the leaked audio, the commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' "Ammar" headquarters, Mahdi Taib, said in Persian, "we bombed the Turkish military forces in Iraq."

US military intelligence believes Iran-backed militias have been coordinating with Kurdish guerrillas to launch attacks on Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq, according to a Pentagon inspector general report released today.

Prominent Iran-backed militias have publicly slammed Turkey’s military operations targeting fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the mountains of northern Iraq, citing violations of Iraq's sovereignty.

The militias are also behind a small but increasing number of rocket attacks on Turkish forces in both Iraq and Syria in recent months, according to the declassified report. Some of the strikes in Iraq were carried out “in cooperation with the PKK,” the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported.

"Following Turkish airstrikes in February that targeted the PKK in northern Iraq, a new Iran-aligned militia group conducted a rocket attack against a Turkish expeditionary base north of Mosul," the report read. The Turkish outpost near Zlikan, northeast of Mosul, has repeatedly come under rocket fire in the past year.

"The DIA assessed that the militias probably will continue to coordinate with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, in response to Turkish air and UAV strikes on PKK positions," the report read.