Since seizing power in Iran in 1979, the assassination machine practiced by the Iranian Supreme Leader and his agents against his opponents outside the borders has not stopped. These operations have resulted in the killing of hundreds of opponents, including prominent leaders, politicians, journalists, and activists.
Last December, the “Abdulrahman Boroumand Human Rights Foundation,” an Iranian human rights organization based in the United States of America, revealed an interactive map that highlights the violence practiced by Iran internally and externally over more than 45 years.
Under the title “Iran: Government Violence Outside the Borders,” the Boroumand Foundation indicated in the report attached to its interactive map that “the Iranian regime carried out about 452 operations targeting opponents of the regime outside the borders,” and according to the map, assassinations constituted the majority of external operations, while threats and attempted murders to which opponents were subjected amounted to 129 cases.
The human rights organization pointed out that investigations revealed the involvement of Iranian authorities, diplomats and security services in carrying out and planning these operations, and Iranian officials admitted this in several cases.
Over the past years, Iraq in general and the Kurdistan Region in particular have been the scene of a large number of Iranian attacks, which have been divided between assassinations, kidnappings, airstrikes and missile attacks.
Fariborz Nasser Heydarabadi, a leader in the Kurdistan Freedom Party opposing Iran, whose father was a fighter in the ranks of the Freedom Party in Sulaymaniyah Governorate at the end of 1996, was assassinated by the Iranian intelligence “Ettelaat”,
Heydarabadi’s memory retains the scene of his father’s kidnapping by the Iranians with the help of a local armed group loyal to Iran in one of the villages of the Bermekron area in Sulaymaniyah Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Haiderabadi points out that the local armed group raided one of the Freedom Party headquarters and their residential compound in one of the villages of Birmekron, disarmed them and initially arrested five of the party’s Peshmerga fighters, who were present at the headquarters with a guest who was present at the headquarters at the time of the raid.
Haiderabadi adds, “They immediately transferred the Peshmerga fighters they had arrested to an unknown location and said that they would release them later. Then they took my father to the back of the village after tying his hands and blindfolding him. Their behavior raised my fears for his fate, so I followed them from a short distance. I was 12 years old at the time, and I saw them hand him over to another car without any license plates, which also took him to an unknown location.”
Haiderabadi points out that by the evening of the same day, someone coming from the city of Sulaymaniyah informed them that the bodies of the arrested party fighters had been found near Birmekron.
Haidarabadi added to (Alhurra), “The day after my father was kidnapped, we were informed that his body was dumped in the Peace Camp area in Sulaymaniyah. When we arrived at the body, we found signs of torture clearly visible on his body. His shoulders, legs, and parts of his chest bones were broken. They shot him twice, one in the forehead and the other in the heart.”
Haidarabadi confirms that his family and security sources in the Freedom Party, after a thorough search and investigation, obtained accurate information that showed that a team from the Intelligence Service affiliated with the Ramadan Headquarters in the Quds Force, the external wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, assassinated his father, after torturing him.
Fariborz demands that the international community prosecute all officials of the Iranian regime and all those who helped them and all those who contributed to the assassinations, killings, crimes, and violations against the Kurdish people and all peoples in Iran and abroad.
The Intelligence Service, along with the Iranian Quds Force, supervises the implementation of these external operations. Tehran has always relied on its diplomats and embassy staff in countries around the world and its armed wings in the region, especially the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias loyal to it, to carry out many of these operations.
The head of the Hana Human Rights Organization (an Iranian Kurdish organization), Hamid Bahrami, told (Alhurra), “The assassination of Kurdish political activists in the Kurdistan Region by the Iranian regime is part of the intensive efforts made by the regime to suppress the Kurdish opposition outside Iran. These assassinations are usually carried out using Iranian security and intelligence forces, such as the Ministry of Intelligence, the Revolutionary Guards, and their agents.”
The Iranian Velayat-e Faqih regime began targeting Kurdish leaders opposing it since 1981 with the assassination of Gholam Keshavarz, a leader in the Iranian Kurdish Komala Party in Cyprus.
This was followed by several assassinations, including the assassination of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the party’s leaders Abdullah Qaderi Azar and Fazel Rasoul during negotiations with a team of Iranian regime diplomats in Austria in 1989. In the same year, the Quds Force assassinated Sediq Kamanjar, a leader in the Iranian Kurdistan Komala Party, in the city of Ranya, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The assassinations also included the Secretary General of the Iranian Kurdistan Freedom Party, Saeed Yazdan Panna, in the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, four months after the party was founded. In 1992, the Iranian regime assassinated Sadeq Sharafkandi, Ghassemlou’s successor, along with Homayoun Ardalan and Nouri Dikordi at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin.
Bahrami added, “During the 1990s, especially between 1992 and 1994, the Iranian terror machine took advantage of the unstable situation in Iraqi Kurdistan and assassinated more than 400 Peshmerga fighters, activists and politicians in Iranian Kurdistan.”
The assassinations, kidnappings and attacks carried out by Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan have not stopped in recent years, and have now included all those who oppose or criticize Iranian influence and the Iranian project, including non-Iranians.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards do not rely only on assassinations to target Iran’s opponents in the Kurdistan Region, but over the past years they have used artillery shelling, bombings, drones and missiles to eliminate them.
Statistics from the human rights organization “Hana” indicate that 30 people were killed in missile and drone attacks launched by the Revolutionary Guards on the headquarters of Iranian Kurdish parties and refugee camps in the cities of the Kurdistan Region in September 2022
