The Suffocation of Iraq Kurdistan

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

After decades of collusion between the Iraqi Kurds and Iran, now their job is done, have they become expendable?

The Iraqi Shi’a fundamentalists loyal to Khomeini and the two main Kurdish parties, the KDP and PUK worked against the Ba’ath government in service of Iran leading to Iraq increasingly becoming a police state to try to combat the enemy within.

Since regime change 21 years ago this year ousted the three-decade-long rule of the Iraqi Ba’ath government, Article 7 of the power-sharing constitution of 2005 banned the party outright (despite it also being the ruling party of Iranian ally, Syria). Law No. 32 that took effect in 2016 after the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) cemented Iran’s control over the country prohibited adopting, glorifying or promoting symbols and propaganda of the former government.

A number of people have been charged and arrested for the most minimal displays of sympathy for the former regime. In April 2019, Iraqi police arrested a man in Baghdad for selling Saddam wristwatches. Such collectibles can sell for many thousands of dollars on the Internet.

In 2021, a restaurant in Kurdistan was shut down for playing a Saddam era song, “Zêra Zêra, Saddam Zêra” [1] (Saddam is golden). Yet others have been sentenced to five years imprisonment for having pictures of the late president of Iraq, or more recently, displaying his image on a mobile phone as happened during the December 2023 provincial elections in Kirkuk. [2]

The KRG also has its own legislation to counter criticism online and any recognition of the achievements of the former government. The charges can be of applied under Article 2 of 2008 that “prevents the misuse of telecommunications equipment” such as publishing information critical of the KRG leadership elite on mobile phone or publishing social media posts. Prison sentences range between six months to five years or fines may be imposed ranging between one to five million Iraqi dinars ($US 700-$US 3,500).” [3]  Even more simple is just to kill the critic. [4]

Both laws have been condemned by international human rights organisations as means of crushing dissent and supressing freedom of expression. The precise wording of the constitution reads any entity or program that adopts, incites, facilitates, glorifies, promotes, or justifies racism or terrorism or accusations of being an infidel (takfir) or ethnic cleansing, especially the Saddamist Ba’ath in Iraq and its symbols, under any name whatsoever, shall be prohibited. Such entities may not be part of political pluralism in Iraq. This shall be regulated by law.” [5] The Ba’ath Party had been very well supported in Kirkuk and Mosul with their large Sunni Arab populations.

Background to the complicity of Shi’a and Kurd groups with Iran

After the second Ba’ath government had come to power in Iraq under Ahmed Hassan Al Bakr in the July 17, 1968, revolution, serious efforts were made by Baghdad to resolve the Kurdish problem. This led to the signing of the 1970 Autonomy Agreement. However, with Mala Mustafa Barzani on one side and Ibrahim Ahmed and his son-in-law, Jalal Talabani on the other, the Kurdish factions demanded too many concessions from Baghdad while refusing to work with each other. The two main factions of the divided KDP strived to supplant and outdo the other, including through their respective negotiations with Baghdad. Kurdish intellectual, Mahmoud Othman, also tried to cement positive relations between the Kurds and the secular Arab Ba’ath but lacked the popular support to achieve any lasting accord. Nonetheless he expressed the Agreement as of lasting importance throughout his long political career.

The Algiers Agreement signed between the Ba’ath government and the Shah of Iran regrettably crushed the last Kurdish armed resistance in 1975. Kurdish discontent had endured but so too, inter -tribal clashes and deep-seated political rivalries impeded Kurdish national unity and wider Kurdish independence aims.

Pursuing Ayatollah Khomeini’s agenda, the Iraqi ~Shi’a Al Da’wa party was retroactively banned by the Ba’ath Government on March 30, 1980 with membership invoking the death penalty. Two days later, on April 1, 1980 al Da’wa tried to assassinate Iraq’s Chaldean Christian Foreign Minister, Tariq al-Aziz. In the botched operation at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University, several innocent students lost their lives. [6] Iranian Islamist terror tactics were putting Iraq on high alert at home and abroad but the Kurds nonetheless began to look to Iran in hope of unseating the Ba’ath government.

War broke out between Iraq with Iran on September 22, 1980, just months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had seized power on February 11, 1979. Saddam Hussein later cited more than 480 violations by Iran to his American captors after the US-led invasion of March 2003. Khomeini had been well-treated as a guest by Saddam Hussein when living in Iraq’s sacred Shi’a city of Najaf. This was based on the Arab ethic that one does not harm a guest in one’s own land. Regrettably for peace, once Khomeini returned to Iran from final exile in France to drive out the Shah and take power in an Islamic revolution he immediately agitated against his former hosts and vowed to install his Shi’a Islamic Republic inside Iraq.

On December 15, 1981, the Iran-loyal Iraqi Shi’a al-Da’wa party (Islamic Call) sent a suicide bomber under Nouri al-Maliki’s command to blow up the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut – the first bombing of its kind. [7] The fatalities attained 61 people and more than 100 wounded. [8] This was followed by similar bombings the following year.

On June 20, 1982, twenty-one months into the war, Saddam Hussein proposed an immediate ceasefire and began a withdrawal from Iranian territory to be accomplished within ten days but Ayatollah Khomeini retorted that the war would not cease even if Iraq quit all Iranian territory until the Ba’ath government was replaced by a Shi’a Islamic Republic (loyal to him) and war reparations paid. [9] He vowed instead that Iran would invade Iraq. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) the clerics established were already backing Shi’a Islamic factions from Iraq living in exile in Iran, such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI was led by the exiled Shi’a Iraqi cleric, Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim and was actively recruiting Iraqi Shi’as to join its armed wing, the Badr Brigade to attack Iraq. Attacks included assassination attempts on the Ba’ath government leadership and its Embassies abroad.

Israel had invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, just days before Iraq’s ceasefire proposal. Iran had asked Baghdad to allow its forces to cross Iraq in order to join forces with its ally, Syria, and fight the Israelis. Iraq agreed on condition of a ceasefire, but Tehran rejected this. Another of the four main conditions Khomeini had stipulated was for 120,000 Faili or Feyli (Shi’a) Kurds and Iraqis of Shi’a origin to be allowed to return to Iraq. Iran’s attention was, however, being diverted by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Iranian operatives began arriving in Beirut to reinforce Syrian-held areas of Lebanon. (Al Da’wa predated the creation of Lebanese Shi’a Hezbollah).

The following month on July 8, 1982, Al Da’wa agents tried to assassinate Saddam Hussein during a state visit when his convoy was passing through Dujail, near Samarra and south of his hometown of Tikrit. Al Da’wa sought further revenge in the trial of the captive president following the US-led invasion of March 2003. Defence witnesses in 2006 denied there had been 148 deaths in the Dujial reprisals and said they knew of several names added to the list who had met their deaths elsewhere and in other circumstances. [10] Defence lawyers were also being murdered by this time. [11]

1983

The American Embassy on Beirut’s Corniche was struck by a suicide truck bomb on April 18, 1983, the US Marine Corps Barracks on October 23, 1983, and just seconds later the French Headquarters. [12] The US Embassy in Kuwait was hit next when a truck laden with explosives rammed through the gates on December 12, 1983, in one of seven coordinated attacks. The other targets included the French Embassy, Kuwait International Airport, a National Petroleum Company rig, a Kuwait national power station, the housing complex of the Raytheon Corporation and a botched attack against a post office. [13] Iran’s man, Abu Mahdi al-Muhendes – then of al Daw’a – was named as the mastermind with Lebanese Hezbollah a participant. [14] Iran utilised both al Da’wa and Hezbollah in these attacks to pressurise Kuwait into withdrawing support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Al Muhendes became one of the Kuwaiti 7 that the Shi’a sought to free in exchange for the Western hostages it took. [15]

Iraq resorts to chemical weapons

According to David McDowall in his impressive tome on Kurdish history, Iraq first used gas against Iran and its Shi’a Iraqi fighters during Operation Dawn-2 when the IRGC entered Iraqi Kurdistan at Haj Umran in alliance with the KDP on July 23, 1983. The Iranians attempted to further exploit military activities in the north of the country on 30 July 1983, during Operation Dawn-3, aiming to overwhelm Iraqi forces controlling the roads between the mountain border towns of Mehran, Dehloran and Elam.

Further attacks occurred between July-August 1983. By October Iran with the KDP had also taken control of Qala Diza and Penjwin. Iran was attacking the KDP-I and undermining the PUK at the same time while using the KDP against Baghdad. McDowall detailed how Saddam took several steps to try to bring the Kurds closer to Baghdad. Efforts to reach accommodation with the Barzanis in the summer of 1982 had failed and in revenge for their alliance with Iran, by September 1983, 8,000 Barzani males were rounded up and deported to their deaths. Baghdad viewed the KDP-Iran alliance as a profound betrayal to the unity of Iraq and to the goodwill and achievements of the 1970 Autonomy Agreement. The KDP-Iran seizure of Haj Umran had put the KDP in military control there but Tehran invested al-Da’wa with formal responsibility despite there being no local Kurdish backing for the Shi’a fundamentalists now in their midst.

By December 1983, Baghdad began negotiating an alliance and ceasefire settlement with the PUK. At the same time in 1983, KDP-I leader, Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, who had long been allied with Baghdad against the clerics in Tehran, urged the PUK to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government and to call a ceasefire.

Baghdad proposed a broad National Unity Government that would include the PUK and its enemy, the Iraqi Communist Party, envisioning greater autonomy for the north, local elections and a Kurdish armed force of 40,000 men with 30 percent of the national budget for the northern sector including for reconstruction. But in return, the PUK demanded that the proposed region under Kurdish autonomy should include Kirkuk, Khanaqin, Mt. Sinjar and Mandali. Arabization was to cease and Kurdish IDPs should be allowed to return home. Talabani also asked that the cordon sanitaire along both the Turkish and Iranian borders be lifted. He asked for 30 percent of oil revenues, and for regional security to come under a peshmerga force, for political prisoners to be released and the jash forces dissolved. It was too much to ask for in wartime. The jash also included the pro-government alternative KDP under Hashim Aqrawi’s leadership.

In this same period in December 1983, the US Special Envoy for the Middle East had stressed to Baghdad that Iraq’s defeat would run counter to US interests in the region. In September 1983, the main thrust of Operation Dawn-4 was Iranian Kurdistan. Three Iranian regular divisions, the Revolutionary Guard, an KDP forces gathered in Mariwan and Sardasht with the goal of attacking Sulaimaniya Iran sought to occupy the Penjwin valley within 45 km (28 mi) of Sulaimaniya and 140 km from Kirkuk. To hold them back, Iraq deployed Mi-8 helicopters equipped with chemical weapons and executed 120 sorties which checked the Iranian alliance 15 km inside Iraq.

Iran regained 110 km2 of territory that the KDPI had battled for across Iranian Kurdistan in the north, and a 15 km2 territory inside Iraq itself, capturing 1,800 Iraqi prisoners of war at the same time. Iraq responded by firing sallies of SCUD-B missiles into Dezful, Masjid Soleiman and Behbehan. Iran was using artillery against Basra, while in the north multiple fronts were opened with the assistance of the KDP. From 1984 on, the US, France, Germany and the USSR sent assistance to Baghdad.

Negotiations during ceasefire between the PUK and Baghdad (December 1983-January 1985)

Red-haired Iraqi Vice President, Izzet Ibrahim Al Douri, was a key participant during the 1983-1985 wartime talks with the PUK. Archival material from the period – held by the University of Exeter – includes documents relating to the talks  in 1984, among them letters to Jalal Talabani from Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, and Dr Fadil al-Barak, Director of Security (January 1984), eight photographs of the Kurdish and Iraqi participants in the negotiations, a picture of Jalal Talabani and Fuad Masum with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and Ali Hassan al-Majid during a visit from the Iraqi delegation to Dokan in Kurdistan in 1983. Other photographs show the PUK leadership with the Iraqi president and his closest aides taken during friendly meetings in Baghdad.

A negotiation document from 1984 and a PUK briefing on the state of these negotiations (10 November 1984), provides insight into the period as does also a paper on normalization in Kurdistan (1984), and a booklet of observations concerning the ending of the PUK’s negotiations with the government (1985). There are copies of three letters to Jalal Talabani from Al Douri (1984-85).

A final statement of the leadership meeting of the PUK in 1984 along with correspondence, press releases, military reports, and various proposals for co-operation between the Kurdish groups is preserved there along with circular letters from Kurdish officials, including Omar Sheikhmous, Kemal Fuad, Fuad Masoum, and Omer Dababa to the leadership of the PUK both inside and outside Iraqi Kurdistan. A press release by the PUK on the clash between the KDP and Hizb al-Sha’b al-Dimuqrati al-Kurdistan, also documents this period. [33]

Although Saddam thereafter saw less cause to defer to all the terms demanded by the PUK the negotiations continued right through until January 1985.

In November 1986, Massoud Barzani met Jalal Talabani in Tehran under Iranian auspices to form a coalition and by February 1987 declared his intention to take part in the Kurdistan Front with a wider Iraqi opposition that would include Saddam’s most bitter enemies. The Kurdistan Front took effect in May 1987 and included the KDP, PUK, KSP, KPDP, Pasok, the Toilers, the ICP and the Assyrian Democratic Movement. In response, Baghdad began rebuilding the jash forces. As many as 250,000 men came together under arms, outnumbering the Kurdish Front by at least three times. As local heads of towns and villages known as Mustashars would receive payments for their men they happily recruited and inflated the numbers of the jash as did the anti-Marxist sheikhs. The money to pay for the Fursan came from oil resources.

Anfal

In this three-month interim, Ali Hassan al-Majid became governor of the northern sector with absolute powers. He set about cutting the peshmergas off from the civilians. When the PUK with Iran captured Dukan in April 1987, al-Majid responded with both conventional and chemical weapons. The path to the Anfal lay ahead. A June 20, 1987, a directive, referenced as SF/4008, authorised by the Northern Affairs Committee allowed for “special strikes to kill the largest number of persons” in specified conflict and the capture and execution of adults found in prohibited areas.

Fast forward to the context for the chemical and conventional weapons attacks on the Kurdish town of Halabja brought under the PUK and Iran’s control.

1988

In January 1988 when Iranian forces were helped by their Kurdish allies to take control of the mountain area above Mawat, crossing the Qara Cholan river, and encroaching on the plains along the Diyala river below, Saddam tried to negotiate anew with Talabani. Talabani refused to co-operate further, following the Iranian clerics’ demand for the secular Ba’ath order to be crushed and the opportunity was lost. Ali Hassan al-Majid initiated the Anfal Operation in retaliation. [17]

The vice president of the Legislative Assembly in Erbil, Kurdish poet, Shaqir Fattah, who had been mayor of Sulaimani had also suggested the government could negotiate usefully with the Kurdish parties, but he disappeared in 1988. [18]

Izzet Ibrahim al-Douri, as a member of the Revolutionary Command Council’s “Northern Affairs Committee” which with the Northern Bureau Command, was responsible for the administration of the Autonomous region, had moved for more humane ways of addressing the renewed Kurdish attacks that were being carried out in concert with Iran. But Ali Hasan al-Majid had lost patience with the PUK and would soon prove himself to be even more ruthless than his cousin.

On July 25, 1988, in an operation known as Operation Mersad some 7,000 militants from MeK armed by Iraq entered Iranian Kurdistan with Iraqi military backup to try to capture Kermanshah and start an uprising. The attack came after Khomeini had officially announced his acceptance of the UN brokered ceasefire resolution between Iraq and Iran. Mass executions of political prisoners across the country started about the same time in 1988 and thousands of detainees were put to death from MeK and the other opposition groups. Years later, audio evidence posted online disclosed details of a high-level official meeting held in August 1988 between the dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, and officials including current President, Ebrahim Reisi. Montazeri was highly critical of the executions and is heard saying that the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) used MeK’s armed incursion as a pretext to carry out the mass killings, which “had been under consideration for several years”. [31] Reisi was nicknamed the Ayatollah of Massacres. [32] Nonetheless, the alliance of the wider Kurdistan Front with Iran remained intact.

The Kurdish Autonomy Region of Iraq, 1991-1996

In late November 1990, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution No. 678 which permitted member states to use ‘all necessary means’ to enforce the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, if they had not left by 15 January 1991. On the night of 16-17 January 1991, ‘Operation Desert Storm’ began with attacks on Baghdad by the multinational force. On 28 February the Bush Snr government declared a cease-fire. Iraq agreed to renounce its claim to Kuwait, to release prisoners of war, and to comply with the relevant UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

Despite Baghdad’s co-operation with the UNSC, George W. Bush urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. When a few thousand opponents of the Ba’ath Party government did so, including the Shi’a and Kurdish groups backed by Iran, he abandoned them to their fate. Izzet al-Douri warned the Kurds of Sulaimaniya saying, “If you have forgotten Halabja, I would like to remind you that we are ready to repeat the operation.” [19]

Aftermath of chemical attacks

Despite the threat, chemical weapons were never used again. Former weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, became one of the most vocal and audible voices. In an updated chapter to his book, Iraq Confidential – the Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein, (2004) Ritter declared: “We now know that both the US and UK intelligence services had, by July 2002, agreed to ‘fix’ the intelligence around policy’. But the fact remains that, at least as far as the CIA is concerned, the issue of ‘fixing intelligence around policy’ predates July 2002, reaching as far back as 1992 when the decision was made to doctor the intelligence about Iraqi SCUD missile accounting, asserting the existence of missiles in the face of UNSCOM inspection results that demonstrated that there were none.” [20]

Scott Ritter reported that all prohibited weapons had been destroyed by 1991. In mid-April 1991, following the collapse of the March uprising in the north and Shi’a revolt in the south, the KDP, PUK and other Kurds from the Front returned to re-negotiate with Saddam. The West belatedly stepped in in response to the humanitarian crisis of the mass exodus to the mountains but had also ulterior motives for the creation of the northern and southern No Fly Zones. Oil deals had been discussed with the opposition groups lobbying against Saddam throughout the Iran-Iraq war. The war with Kuwait also concerned oil rights.

In April 1991, Jalal Talabani announced that Saddam Hussain had agreed, in principle, to implement the provisions of the Kurdish Autonomy Agreement of 1970 but negotiations again stalled over the boundaries of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, and the demand made yet again as in 1984 for Kirkuk to be included. On 5 April 1991, the UN passed resolution No. 688 calling on member states to go to the aid of the Kurds and for Iraq to co-operate with the relief efforts. Joint Task Force ‘Operation Provide Comfort’ was formed on 6 April 1991 and deployed to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base to undertake humanitarian operations in the north of Iraq. The first air dropped supplies did not however reaching any of the refugees stranded in the mountains bordering Turkey until April 7, 1991.

The Turks had refused to let people come down to shelter just within the border of Turkish Kurdistan on the lower plateaux and valleys and hundreds perished in the cold. Many others died when stepping on land mines.

By October 1991, there still being no consensus reached with the Kurdish leaders, Baghdad suspended its services to the north and subjected the zone to an economic blockade in addition to the UN sanctions it suffered under. The Kurdistan Front went on to organise elections for a 105-member Kurdish national assembly to be under the governance of a Kurdish president. The first elections took place on May 19, and the KDP and the PUK were assured an almost equal number of seats.

In March 1993, the Kurdish parliament was dismissed by the Iraqi Kurdistan Assembly for its failure to effectively deal with the burgeoning politico-economic crisis in the region. A new parliament was put in place by the end of April, but the PUK withdrew from the Assembly. Disagreement over the appointment of Masoud Barzani to the office of regional President and dispute over the oil revenues being taken by the KDP at the Khabur crossing with Turkey broke out into a bloody armed confrontation between the KDP and PUK on May Day 1994. The Kurdish Autonomous Area, (KAZ, as the dubbed) and protected by Allied overflights was divided into two zones of control – the KDP and its yellow banners and the PUK with its green equivalent.

In 1994, a renewed and bloody armed conflict erupted between the KDP and PUK. Despite securing greater autonomy for the north and effectively keeping the Iraqi government from controlling a large part of their own country, the KDP and PUK renewed their old hostilities. War broke out on Mayday 1994.

On 31 August 1996, KDP leader, Massoud Barzani called on Saddam Hussein for help against the PUK. He went to Baghdad and confidential sources claim he also met with Ali Hassan al-Majid there. ‘Operation Provide Comfort’ was still ongoing but the KDP’s co-operation with Baghdad and the PUK’s with Tehran undermined stability and Western confidence.

In 1997, clashes continued between the KDP and PUK continued. A truce brokered by the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey called the “Ankara Process” was broken when PUK forces attacked KDP positions and occupied the Safeen mountain positions on October 12, 1997. Turkish forces invading the area anew to attack members of the PKK added strain. The KDP also attacked the PKK as it had with the PUK and allied tribes in Bradost in 1992.

Hidden intrigues

The West’s policy was to show outward support for Iraq’s Kurds to set up access to the oil fields there and subsequently undermine and overthrow Saddam Hussein with little thought for how this was achieved – such as forming an alliance with Al Da’wa and SCIRI leaders with blood on their hands or the consequences…

Those of us who were immersed in these events at local level in Iraq – and who were largely confined to the Kurdish region – were often unaware of the subplots and agreements being made behind the scenes.

The main religious Shi’a Iraqi enemies of Saddam Hussein and the Kurdistan Front had been working in collaboration with the US and UK on the one hand, and, on the other, in close collaboration with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and key Iranian officials – the fallout from this alliance constitutes the main subject of my forthcoming book, Iraq: The Next Revolt – Deception, Corruption, Hope.

While Baghdad’s enemies were being feted by Tehran, Iran’s major opposition groups were enjoying the hospitality and backing of Saddam Hussein. The KDPI led by Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MeK), and various other groups including assorted Palestinians, were all safe and secure in Baghdad.

The PUK encouraged Ghassemlou to negotiate with the clerics, but the clerics were insincere in their reasons for entering into any such talks. Ghassemlou lost his life in Vienna on July 13, 1989, during the final round of such secret ‘talks.’ The regime’s hitmen returned to Tehran and were then promoted while the Iranian Kurdish conflict with the Mullah’s theocracy continued as bitterly as before. [21] Their next target was Ghassemlou’s successor, Sadiq Sharafkandi, murdered on September 17, 1992, in Berlin [22] and a score of Iranian dissidents abroad ever since. [23]

Iran had long plotted to exert control over Iraq

In January 1999, the US Government designated seven Iraqi opposition groups as eligible for US $97 million in financial assistance under the Iraqi Liberation Act. This had been approved by Congress in October 1998. They were to be Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC), the KDP and PUK, the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Iraqi National Accord (INA) under Shi’a Iraqi Arab, Ali Allawi, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan (IMIK), and the Movement for Constitutional Monarchy – all were Saddam’s enemies and all were funded with the express policy intent of removing him from power. Saddam and his secular administration were to be replaced with America and Britain’s hand-picked puppets – and regime change implemented through the invasion of Iraq. This was illegally launched at Kurdish New Year in March 2003.

The key players had long been groomed and were waiting in the wings. They were effectively handed power on a golden platter irrespective of their murderous past histories and inexperience in running a country.

Those intrigues and the role played in tandem by the international oil giants form the main focus of my new book, Iraq – the Next Revolt – Deception, Corruption, Hope due out in 2024. [24]

Kurdistan under threat

On January 17, 2024, KDP Prime Minister, Masrour Barzani, canceled his meeting at Davos with Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Barzani protested against Iran’s 11 ballistic missile attack on Erbil the day before, [25] but Abdollahian defended Tehran’s strikes, reiterating the state’s pretext of hitting Mossad agents operating in Erbil and backing it with reference to Iran’s recent border security agreement signed through their loyal henchmen in government in Baghdad.

Iraq’s National Security Adviser, Qassim al-Araji, responded that Iran’s claims were “baseless” posting online after visiting the site of the attacks that he “visited the residence of the businessman targeted last night in Erbil. [26] Kurdish oil magnate Peshraw Dizayee and a dual British-Iraqi Chaldean Christian millionaire, Karam Mikhail Saridar, the CEO of the Rayyan al-Iraq group that had been dining with him [27] at the time were killed along with Dizayee’s baby daughter, Zhina, and their migrant Filipina maid/housekeeper. [28] Both men had business ties with Dubai. In March 2022 Iran had similarly attacked and struck CEO and founder of Kurdish oil company, KAR Group, Baz Karim Barzinji’s home, claiming it was a Mossad base. Barzinji survived. [29]

One commentator observed: “The main reason why Iran is now targeting multi-millionaires in Kurdistan is quite disconcerting: These strikes are intended to serve as a message and as a warning, essentially saying, ‘You are extremely vulnerable and will always be at our mercy.’

“It’s a direct warning to the Barzanis, in particular, as these millionaires are typically close associates of theirs and it is Erbil primarily that is currently being hit. In Kurdistan, you won’t find many wealthy individuals who aren’t involved with the oligarchs in some or other business capacity. The strikes aren’t aimed at infrastructure; instead, they are targeting prominent figures whose downfall would deeply unsettle the Barzanis. It is worth noting that there aren’t any Israeli bases in Kurdistan but there are many Iranian ones.”

Iraq has become a vassal of Iran after 45 years of plotting by Tehran.

Walking the tightrope as he has done since being appointed prime minister in the consensus deal that was reached a year after the 2021 elections, Mohammed al-Sudani said the attack “undermines the strong relations between Iraq and Iran.” But everyone knows that Iran now controls Iraq and Iraq has become an Iranian client state – not unlike Lebanon.

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry said it recalled Iraq’s ambassador from Tehran and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires to deliver a letter of protest. Iraq also sent a formal complaint to the UN Security Council putting on a show of observing international norms.

According to local sources, Iran also struck in a more practical way: On January 12, Iraq’s Electricity Ministry said that Iranian gas supplies to power plants in central and southern Iraq dropped by more than 75% to just 10 million cubic feet per day, causing the country’s grid to lose more than 4,000 megawatts. [30] It was claimed the shortage was due to ‘maintenance work in the Islamic Republic.’

This is not unlike the so-called ‘maintenance work of the oil pipelines between the Kurdistan region and Turkey that has severely hit the Kurdish economy, choking the life blood of the semi-autonomous state. Baghdad made ‘loans’ to the KRG to enable civil servants to be paid while delicate budget negotiations continued.

Powerful cartels have come to control the state since their leaders were handed power twenty-one years ago under the Muhasasa power sharing deal brokered by Bush and Blair. In the past two years the main Shi’a militias and PMF have taken over the state.

Iraq has become a vassal of Iran after 45 years of plotting by Tehran.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2024 iKurd.net. All rights reserved

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