TEHRAN — The Iranian Armed Forces are striking positions in Iraq’s Kurdistan region belonging to armed separatist factions that intelligence reports say are working with the Trump administration. Washington allegedly plans to use these groups to launch ground assaults inside Iran.

On Wednesday, a joint operation by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry targeted the headquarters and depot sites of an unnamed separatist group.

“These separatists had planned, with the support of the American-Zionist enemy and by exploiting wartime conditions, to enter the country through the western borders and carry out terrorist attacks with separatist objectives in urban and border areas,” the IRGC and Intelligence Ministry said in a joint statement. “In a joint preemptive action, a significant portion of these mercenaries’ positions and capabilities was destroyed, inflicting heavy losses on them.”

Over the years, Iran has signed multiple security agreements with the Iraqi government, as well as with authorities in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, to push U.S.- and Israeli-backed Kurdish separatists away from Iran’s borders. However, in recent interviews with European media, some leaders of these groups have said they received ammunition and weapons from the CIA and Mossad and are awaiting orders to enter Iran. 

Since the war began on February 28, U.S. and Israeli warplanes have bombed several border control outposts in Iran’s western provinces. American media outlets, including CNN, have framed these illegal, terrorist, and separatist plans as initiatives that would later make it easier  for the "Iranian people" to "stage protests."

Iraqi-based Kurdish separatists also took up arms against Iran during Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the country in the 1980s. These groups have long been used by foreign governments as tools to pressure Iran, but they lack popular support inside the country. Iran’s Kurdish population argues that Kurds are among the oldest Iranian peoples and that, if anything, Kurds who were separated from Iran during World War I should be able to return to their homeland. Kurds formed the first Iranian government, the Median Kingdom, between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE.

The Iranian Armed Forces have repeatedly warned that the U.S. and Israel are designing terrorist operations in western Iranian provinces aimed at creating a separatist Kurdish government. Such a plan, if carried out, would also threaten the national security of Turkey and Syria, both of which have significant Kurdish populations.

In recent days, the IRGC Ground Force has also attacked separatist targets in Iraq using around 30 drones and, on another occasion, three missiles.

The U.S. and the Trump administration attacked Iran on Saturday with the aim of toppling the Islamic Republic. Since assassinating Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and killing more than 1,000 Iranians in attacks on civilian sites, the two regimes have failed to provoke a domestic uprising—an outcome analysts say was central to their calculations. Instead, large numbers of Iranians have taken to the streets nightly in support of the Islamic Republic. This has reportedly pushed the U.S. and Israel to consider deploying ground troops, as signs indicate that airstrikes alone cannot topple the Islamic Republic.