A border security agreement between Iraq and Iran was recently signed. According to Iraqi officials, the agreement is primarily focused on tightening the border with the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Tehran claims Kurdish armed groups pose a security threat.
According to a statement from the office of the Iraqi prime minister, coordination in “safeguarding the common borders between the two nations and deepening cooperation in numerous security domains” are part of the joint security agreement signed on Sunday.
In the presence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, the agreement was signed by Qasim al-Araji, national security adviser for Iraq, and Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, according to the prime minister’s office.
“Under the negotiated security arrangement, Iraq vows it will not allow armed organizations to exploit its territory in the Iraqi Kurdish region to conduct any border-crossing attacks on neighbour Iran,” said an Iraqi security official who witnessed the signing, according to the Reuters news agency.
According to Iran’s state news agency IRNA, Shamkhani condemned “vicious acts by counter-revolutionary elements” in northern Iraq, a reference to the Kurdish parties present there.
The deal, which was signed on Sunday, “can completely and fundamentally terminate the nasty deeds of these groups,” whom the Iranian government refers to as “terrorists,” the speaker claimed.
Some Iranian Kurdish factions run camps and rear bases in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, which Iran has previously accused of advancing American or Zionist objectives.
As Iranian Revolutionary Guards conducted missile and drone operations against Iranian Kurdish groups located in northern Iraq last year, accusing them of inciting unrest brought on by the death of an Iranian Kurdish woman while she was in police custody, the frontier came back into sharper focus.
Following the Iranian airstrikes, Iraq declared in November that it would redeploy federal guards to the Iranian-Kurdish border, taking over from the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Tehran applauded this decision.
Speaking in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stated that Shamkhani’s current visit to Iraq had been planned for four months and was centered on matters relating to the armed organizations in northern Iraq.
Threats from Iraqi territory won’t be tolerated in any way, he warned.
In the past, groups stationed in northern Iraq’s mountains have conducted an armed revolt against Iran; however, in recent years, their operations have decreased, and experts have said that they have virtually stopped all military activity.
Iran has frequently expressed worry over the suspected presence of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq and has also accused Kurdish forces of cooperating with its arch-enemy Israel.
Kurdish fighters working for Israel planned to blow up a “critical” defense manufacturing center in the city of Isfahan, according to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, who made the claim last year.
