Iran’s demands for US forces to withdraw from a critical air base in Iraqi Kurdistan coupled with threats to expand operations against “American and Zionist mercenaries” are sending jitters across the Kurdish enclave, with many asking how far Tehran will go and what, if anything, the United States will do to stop it.

Mohammed Bagheri, senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, appeared to be emboldened by America’s controversial withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling it “a defeat and an embarrassment worse than Vietnam.” In comments to Iran TV on Sunday, Bagheri said, “Iraq and its northern [Kurdish] region should not allow America and the Zionist regime and armed counter-revolutionary groups to have training bases, TV and radio stations, camps [and] military training, then attack our border regions and assassinate our officers.”

Bagheri was alluding to armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups that have been granted safe haven by the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRG). However, fearing Tehran’s wrath, Iraqi Kurdish leaders keep the Iranian Kurdish groups on a very tight leash, forbidding cross-border attacks by them on Iran from Iraqi territory. Iranian Kurdish peshmerga forces' main activity is to levy “taxes” on smugglers crossing parts of the mountainous border separating Iraq from Iran that the KRG assigns to them. As such, they have a negligible physical impact within Iran, though their network of sympathizers periodically engages with Iranian forces, feeding the cycle of repression against Iran’s roughly 8 million Kurds, with Sunnis bearing the brunt.

Bagheri claimed the United States was aiding and abetting the Iranian Kurdish rebels and holding secret meetings with them at the Harir air base.