Iran’s Continuing Strikes on Armed Kurdish Groups in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region: Redefining Threat Perception
As Tehran’s threat perception has escalated, the 2023 Iran–Iraq Security Agreement has taken on a different character. This agreement, signed in March 2023, was originally intended to transfer responsibility for containing threats posed by armed Kurdish groups from Iran’s unilateral actions to the sovereign obligations of the Iraqi government, thereby establishing a framework for strengthening Baghdad’s authority over the border regions.[vii]
Iran now treats full implementation of that agreement as something closer to a strategic demand: a way of pressing Baghdad to address what Tehran sees as a broader threat, not merely a local security nuisance. In practice, meeting Iran’s demands for full implementation would require the Iraqi government to exercise effective control over the border areas, disarm the armed Kurdish groups, relocate them away from Iran’s borders, strengthen border security, and prevent their armed activities.
This agreement appears to remain on Baghdad’s security agenda. On 18 June 2026, Iraqi National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji led a high-level security delegation in Sulaymaniyah to discuss the security agreement with Iran and the measures required for its implementation.[viii] Later on, during al-Zaidi’s visit to Tehran on 23 July, the two sides also discussed the security agreement and Iraq’s commitment to preventing its territory from being used to threaten Iran.[ix]
In Tehran’s security calculations, the expulsion of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from Iraq is regarded as one of the most successful examples of security cooperation between the two countries, and Iran hopes for a similar outcome with the Kurdish groups: disarmament, or at minimum, relocation away from its borders. But the analogy has clear limits: the MKO was a centralized organization with a single leadership that could be relocated abroad once it lost its state sponsor. The Kurdish groups comprise several distinct organisations with deep ethnic, linguistic, and political ties to the Kurdistan Region itself, making their disarmament or relocation considerably more difficult and politically sensitive than the MKO’s.