An American citizen killed in Iran strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan: US
WASHINGTON,— The United States said Thursday that one of its citizens was killed in Iranian strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan as it separately announced fresh enforcement of sanctions on Tehran’s oil sales.
Iran’s clerical state on Thursday carried out cross-border strikes, with 13 reported dead, amid unrest at home sparked by the death in custody of an Iranian Kurdish woman by the notorious morality police.
“We can confirm that a US citizen was killed as a result of a rocket attack in the Iraqi Kurdistan region” on Thursday, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
Citing privacy laws, he declined further details. But he reiterated US denunciations of the strikes.
“We continue to condemn Iran’s violations of Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Patel told reporters.
Asked if there would be retaliation, Patel said the United States has “a number of tools and a number of lines of efforts to continue to hold Iran accountable for its destabilizing actions in the region.”
The United States has imposed sanctions on the morality police — accused by protesters of killing in custody 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa (Jina) Amini after she violated the Islamic republic’s strict rules on women’s dress — and has worked to support restoration of internet access inside Iran.
The unrest following Amini’s death on September 16, which has killed dozens, came as President Joe Biden’s administration negotiates indirectly through the European Union on returning to a 2015 nuclear deal scrapped by his predecessor Donald Trump.
If Tehran agrees to the terms for returning to compliance with the deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the United States would lift its unilateral ban on other nations buying Iranian oil.
The Biden administration made clear Thursday it was enforcing sanctions for now, announcing punitive measures over Iranian oil trading of companies in China, India and the United Arab Emirates as well as Iran.
“As Iran continues to accelerate its nuclear program in violation of the JCPOA, we will continue to accelerate our enforcement of sanctions on Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sales under authorities that would be removed under the JCPOA,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Copyright © 2022, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP
Iran Unleashes Terror Against Kurdistan
Smoke billows following an Iranian cross-border attack on Kurdish opposition groups in the area of Zargwez, Sulaimani prvince, Iraqi Kurdistan on September 28, 2022. Photo: AFP
Marcel Cartier | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
What started as a calm Wednesday morning in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq soon turned into a terrifying ordeal. Missiles rained down on numerous sites across the region starting mid-morning, with drones still circling endlessly as night fell.
By the time it was over – at least for night’s reprieve – the death toll stood at 13, including a pregnant woman whose baby miraculously survived.
The Kurdistan Region has been under attack seemingly without end – most often from Turkey. However, Wednesday’s bloodbath was the handiwork of the battered Islamic Republic of Iran, the theocratic entity embroiled in a mass, popular uprising for nearly two weeks.
Ah yes, Iran. The state that proclaims itself to be so vehemently against oppression that it wants to show itself to be the staunchest defender of the Palestinian people – and yet, Wednesday’s scenes could have been from Gaza. In fact, even the rationale behind the attacks was couched in the same language the Israelis always use, that of fighting “terrorism”.
In this case, though, the “terrorists” were not the Palestinians, but the Kurds. It has been no coincidence that the wave of protests that has hit Iran has been centered on the Kurdistan province and other largely Kurdish inhabited areas.
Syrian Kurdish women hold up portraits of Iranian Mahsa (Jina) Amini, during a protest condemning her death in Iran, in the main Kurdish city of Qamishlo, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), September 26, 2022. Photo: ANHA via Ap
The death on September 26th of Mahsa Amini is a case in point about the Kurds’ horrific fate at the hands of the Iranian state. Amini was certainly killed for being a woman, the victim of the “morality police” that enforces the state’s patriarchal rule. She also very well may have also been a target for being a Kurd. Even the way she is known globally exemplifies the national oppression in the country, being that her real name was not Mahsa, but Jhina. That name was not approved by the chauvinist Iranian authorities, so Mahsa is how she was officially registered.
In the days leading up to the bombardment in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq – a blatant violation of its territorial integrity and sovereignty – Jhina’s cousin Erfan Mortazee began to speak out her fate. His appearance made it clear he was no passive bystander. Dressed in military fatigues, Erfan was not speaking from inside Iran, but from Iraq, a member of the Komala Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran. Like many, the heinous conditions of life for Kurds in Iran had forced him to pick up a gun and become a Peshmerga fighter for his nation’s liberation.
The Communist Party’s branch of Komala was just one of several Kurdish groups exiled in northern Iraq that came under attack on Wednesday morning. The Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan reported that its primary base was all but leveled. I found the images distressing, given that I had visited the camp last year, and knowing that it housed more than just Peshmerga fighters, but also families who had found refuge and solace across the border. Here they could breathe freer as Kurds, as well as Iranians.
Kawsar Fattahi (L), a member of Komala’s Central Committee, with Siamak Modarresi, the Deputy Secretary General of Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, 2021. Photo Marcel Cartier/via Ekurd.net
Kawsar Fattahi, a member of Komala’s Central Committee, told me that about ten suicide drones targeted the camp starting at around 10:15 in the morning, but that this wasn’t the first attack in recent days. “It has been happening for a few days already. They attacked the border area of Sidakan because our Peshmergas are there. This is related to Amini’s death because the regime is under great pressure. They need to make people scared and for the world to forget the protests.”
At the same time, she made it clear that Iran has been looking to attack Komala for some time, using as a pretext the allegations that the group was looking to wage terrorist attacks inside Iran after the arrest of four of its members in late July. In typical Islamic Republic fashion, they were painted as Israeli Mossad agents in order to brandish them not as a homegrown force, but as foreign meddlers.
“After they made this claim, Iran already said it would attack our camps. We were ready for it because this is not the first time,” Fattahi said.
Iran strikes KDPI bases in Koya, Iraqi Kurdistan, September 28, 2022. Photo: Rudaw TV
For other Iranian Kurdish groups in northern Iraq, this also wasn’t the first time that missiles rained down on them. The oldest of the exiled parties, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), reported scenes of chaos and panic at their headquarters in the town of Koya on Wednesday. It was here that one of its pregnant Peshmerga members succumbed to her injuries, but her baby survived.
In September 2018, Iran had also launched missiles against the camp and an adjacent refugee center, killing 18 and injuring at least 50. Like Komala, many had also carved out some semblance of a relatively free life here, creating more than simply a military barracks, but also schools and a genuine sense of community.
Kurdish PJAK/HPG guerrilla. Photo: HPG
Attacks also targeted the bases of the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) and the Party for a Free Life (PJAK), the group that is associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has waged a more than forty-year insurgency against the Turkish state. Many of these organisations cooperate with one another, while others have less cordial relations. However, according to the Iranian state, what unites them as the enemy is their Kurdishness.
Iran’s deadly attacks on Kurdistan may appear to show strength, but it may be more apt to see them in terms of desperation. It is no coincidence that it’s suffering Kurdish masses – on either side of the border – who are viewed by the clerical regime the greatest threat to its continued existence. Rebellion has always been etched into the mountains of these lands.
For those such as Komala’s Fattahi, the fight is against the double oppression that took Jhina Amini’s life – that of being a Kurd and of being a woman. Even after a day of destruction, Fattahi ended off in conversation on the most optimistic note possible, saying bluntly and confidently “the end of the regime is near.”
Marcel Cartier is an American hip-hop artist, journalist, filmmaker, writer, and political commentator based in Germany. He has reported on Kurdish nationalism and recording the experiences of anti-ISIS fighters belonging to the YPG and YPJ militias during the Rojava–Islamist conflict. His first book Serkeftin became one of the first major accounts by an English-speaking journalist to gain access to the civil structures created by Kurdish militants in Rojava. You can follow him on Twitter @Cartier_Marcel.
The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.
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