The drones and missiles from Iran come at night. Then the sky over Erbil in northern Iraq lights up orange-red - from the air defense missiles. Almost every day, a US military base or the US consulate in the autonomous Kurdish region is attacked. Most of the missiles and drones are neutralized, but some manage to break through the defenses and reach their targets. This most often happens in less secure areas such as Iraqi Kurdistan, where Iranian Kurds have their base, writes the German public media ARD.
"I was near the gate when I heard a loud explosion", says one of the fighters from the Kurdish militia "Kurdistan Freedom Party" (PSK). He stands in front of a destroyed house and points to where the rocket fell. "I looked around and within ten seconds three more rockets hit", the man explains to the German publication.
According to him, the drones can be heard from afar and a person has about ten to fifteen seconds to hide. While the rockets strike suddenly, without any warning. In one of these attacks, one of the Peshmerga fighters was killed and several others were injured. The PUK is one of six Iranian Kurdish parties that have now united and want to oppose the regime in Tehran.
Is a ground offensive by Iranian Kurds imminent?
Despite ideological differences between the different groups of Iranian Kurds, they are of one mind - they want a democratic Iran with a federal system that allows Kurds to have autonomy, explains Austrian political scientist Thomas Schmiedinger, who lives in Erbil. He is also subjected to constant drone and missile attacks in northern Iraq. He has also heard rumors that Iranian Kurds were being armed by the CIA to carry out a ground offensive in Iran.
At the moment, according to Schmiedinger, this is not very likely, since the capabilities of Iranian Kurdish militias are limited. "None of these groups have more than 2,000 armed fighters. Moreover, they only have light weapons. The classic weapon of such a fighter is a Kalashnikov".
There is another reason for the reluctance of the Kurdish militias to intervene directly in the conflict - they are afraid that they will be used by the US and then abandoned. This would not be the first such case. Hassan Sharafi of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq says: "When it comes to the fight for Kurdish freedom, no one helps us. We only receive support when they want to use us for a certain purpose". None of the groups categorically exclude the possibility of participating in a ground offensive. "We have been training for such a situation for a long time", says the PSK fighter. "But Iran still has enough missiles and drones, and it's not time to cross the border".
Pro-Iranian militias are the target
For now, the Kurds are on the alert and are constantly under fire - not only from Iran: a large number of Shiite militias are fighting in Iraq on the side of the regime in Tehran and are attacking American positions in Baghdad with drones.
However, since the Americans recently transferred almost all their troops from central Iraq to the north of the country, pro-Iranian militias have become increasingly active in the Kurdish autonomous region - and are even looking for targets abroad, as Iraqi political consultant Ihsan al-Shamari says. "They have already announced that they will also attack American bases in neighboring countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan." He can even imagine that they will try to attack targets in Israel. In recent days, these groups that support the regime in Tehran have also been targeted by American strikes. Dozens are believed to have been killed.
The Iraqi government condemned these attacks, as well as the shelling that Iran is carrying out. This is a desperate attempt by Baghdad not to create serious problems with any of the parties to the conflict, writes ARD. Iraq continues to be economically and militarily dependent on the former occupying power - the United States. However, the influence of neighboring Iran is great - when Mojtaba Khamenei was announced as the new supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, the government in Baghdad, as well as Kurdish leaders in Erbil, sent official congratulations to Tehran.