TEHRAN – Iran’s security forces have dismantled a terrorist team affiliated with Israel’s Mossad spy agency in the western parts of the country, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib said on Sunday.
Khatib said at a ceremony here that the terrorists had sneaked across the border into western Iran from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
“Given the cooperation of the new Iraqi administration and assurances offered, we wish to see our western borders secure and clear of any security incident,” he said.
“We remind the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of its responsibilities in this regard,” he added.
Khatib made it clear that Iranian military and security forces will not hesitate to deliver a powerful and crushing response to any destabilizing act against the country’s border regions.
IRGC Ground Force chief Brigadier General Muhammad Pakpour said on Saturday Iraq has undertaken a commitment to disarm and expel anti-Iran terrorists operating in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
“We are waiting for the government of Iraq to honor its commitments, and have offered them an opportunity (to flush out the terrorists). Otherwise, and if no action is taken, the IRGC’s strikes will persist,” he said.
Asked by if the Baghdad government has a deadline of months or days, the general said the Iraqi government itself knows the given time.
Last November, positions of anti-Iran separatist and terrorist groups in northern Iraq came under combined attacks using missiles and kamikaze drones. The strikes targeted the positions of the notorious PDKI and Komala groups.
Local Kurdish sources said the attacks killed as many as 26 members of the terrorist groups.
Earlier this week, IRGC intelligence forces disbanded a terror network affiliated with Daesh Khorasan (Daesh-K) in Iran’s southern province of Fars.
The IRGC Intelligence Department, in cooperation with Fajr Intelligence Organization of Fars province, spotted and dismantled the operational and media network of Daesh-K, an offshoot of the Daesh terrorist group in Afghanistan and captured its main element in the province.