SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iran on Sunday called for the “immediate expulsion” of the Kurdish opposition parties based on the border areas in the Kurdistan Region.
Secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council Ali Shamkhani asked Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi who paid a visit to Iran on Sunday to expel the Iranian Kurdish opposition parties from the country.
Shamkhani considered “increasing movements of terrorist groups in the Iraqi Kurdistan region as a matter of threat to the security of the two countries’ borders,” state news agency IRNA cited him as saying.
He urged “the immediate disarmament and expulsion of those groups from Iraq,” IRNA reported.
His comments came after Iran’s revolutionary corps bombarded several areas in the Kurdistan Region’s Sidakan and Balakayati areas last week, using drones, warplanes and artillery.
There were no casualties in the bombardment.
The bombardment came a few days after commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Ground Force Mohammad Pakpour warned people of the Kurdistan Region to stay away from bases used by the Kurdish opposition parties on the border with Iran.
“Iraq and the officials of the northern region of this country have been given the necessary warnings,” he said.
In August, Shamkhani also urged Iraq to expel the Kurdish opposition parties from the Kurdistan Region.
“We call on the Iraqi government to take more serious action to expel these groups from Iraqi Kurdistan so that Iran does not have to take preventative measures against…these armed terrorists,” said Shamkhani.
There are frequent clashes along Iran’s border with the Kurdistan Region between Iranian security forces and Kurdish armed groups such as the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK).
