Will Iraq succeed in facing Iranian and Turkish attacks?
In the midst of the continuous attacks that the Kurdistan region has witnessed during the past days, whether by Tehran targeting Kurdish sites in northeastern Iraq with missiles and drones, or by Ankara on the other hand launching strikes in northwestern Iraq, and despite Iraq’s declaration of its rejection of these attacks, along with condemnations from countries around the world, whether at the regional or international level, the Turkish and Iranian sides have refused to respond to all these voices, instead insisting on targeting Kurdish groups.
Iraqi moves
These attacks prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani to hold an urgent meeting with the Ministerial Council for Iraqi National Security on November 23 to discuss the Turkish and Iranian attacks on the Kurdistan region.
The meeting resulted in developing a plan to redeploy the Iraqi border forces to hold the zero line along the borders with Iran and Turkey, and this plan will be implemented with the cooperation and coordination of the Ministerial Council with the Kurdistan government and the regional Ministry of Peshmerga, with the aim of unifying the national effort to protect the country’s borders. This will occur with the participation of the Iraqi forces and units of the Peshmerga forces (forces belonging to the Kurdistan Region and also affiliated with the Iraqi Ministry of Defense).
On November 22, the Iraqi Council of Representatives held a closed session with the participation of military and security leaders to discuss the tools that can be used to confront the repeated Iranian and Turkish attacks on Kurdish towns in the country, which resulted in a number of deaths and injuries. A day before, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani held a closed meeting with Sudani in which they discussed the aggressions of some regional countries against the Kurdish region.
Motives for the attacks
The Iranian moves in the Kurdistan region, which increased during the months of October and November as part of the Rabi 1 and Rabi 2 operations, come within the allegations of the Kurds’ participation in fueling the protests taking place in Tehran since the killing of the 20-year-old Kurdish girl Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Iranian morality police.
As for the Turkish side, it says that its moves to target Kurdish sites in Syria and Iraq come as part of Operation Claw-Sword, which followed the bombing in Taksim Square in Istanbul on November 14, which a Syrian girl was accused of carrying out under the direction of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Turkish and Iranian reactions
It should be noted that after Iraq announced the redeployment of its forces on the border strip with Turkey and Iran for the first time since 2003, the mullah regime moved to file a complaint against Iraq in the UN Security Council, as the permanent Iranian diplomatic mission to the United Nations submitted a written complaint to urge the Iraqi side to implement commitments to keep the Kurdish parties away from the borders and disarm them, accusing Baghdad of reluctance to take action.
At the same time, a spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Kanaani, announced that his country hopes that Iraqi lands will not be used to threaten Iran's security, while the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards threatened to launch new attacks to target opponents of Iran stationed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Meanwhile, Ankara responded to the Iraqi plan by announcing that it would continue to attack the Kurds, which was confirmed by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on November 25, when he said, “Operation Claw-Sword to target militants in northern Iraq and Syria is continuing by land and air.”
