A few days after an Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ missile attacks on the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Khaled Azizi, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said that Tehran fired the rockets “to send a clear message to the United States and the countries of the region.”
Azizi, a former secretary and leader of the KDP, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the regime in Tehran “is currently facing severe political and economic problems and crises at the internal and external levels, and will not emerge from them easily and peacefully.
“By targeting our headquarters, Iran sent an explicit message to specific parties such as America and its allies in the region that Tehran is able to hit all those sides if its interests were put at risk. This means that the Iranian regime has made our area a field for experiments,” Azizi stated.
Iran said on Sunday it had targeted the KDP leadership headquarters and training centers in the district of Koysinjaq (70 km east of Erbil) last Saturday. Azizi was wounded in the attack, along with the party’s current secretary Mustafa Mawloudi.
The senior official said the party lost 13 lives in the attack, while more than 45 people were injured, including fighters, civilians and many women and children.
Asked whether Iran had made warnings ahead of the attack, Azizi said the strike was “unexpected”, pointing out, however, that the party “has a security committee that collects accurate information about the dangers that threaten the party and is in constant contact with the party leadership.”
He added that the committee had repeatedly warned of “the regime’s intention to strike us militarily.”
Commenting on Tehran’s threats that it would repeat its attacks on the Kurdistan region, Azizi said: “The possibility of further Iranian attacks depends on the results of the upcoming US legislative and presidential elections, the course of the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and the seriousness of threats exchanged between Iran and the United States.”
“I can say that the repetition of Iranian attacks against us falls entirely within the framework of Tehran’s relations with Baghdad, the repercussions of burning the Iranian consulate in Basra and the orientation of the new Iraqi government.”
The KDP official pointed out that Iranian drones flying over the Iraqi territory was something “ordinary”, noting that the matter “concerns Iraq and its sovereignty, which the Iranian regime has blatantly violated.”
