Iran’s Army Launches Military Drills Near Border With Iraq

The Iranian Army's Ground Force has launched a three-day war game around the northwestern town of Piranshahr in West Azarbaijan province bordering Iraqi Kurdistan.

The military drills kicked off in Pasveh District in Piranshahr County on Saturday with the participation of combat forces of the 164th Mobile Assault Battalion of the Army’s Ground Forces. 

The battalion’s commander Colonel Hamid Firouzjai said, “The forces partaking in the exercise use organizational, light, semi-heavy and heavy weapons,” adding that the forces carry out heliborne parachute operations, overnight raids, helicopter combat, control of communication roads, capture of heights and offensive destruction and urban warfare during the drill. 

Amid nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the death in custody of a Kurdish girl in mid-September, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched several rounds of attacks against Iraqi Kurdistan, apparently aimed at intimidating the Kurds.

The maneuver took place only days after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard held another drill in the northwestern region of Aras along the borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. In mid-September, Iran warned that it would not tolerate any seizure of territory from Armenia by Azerbaijan after military clashes broke out between its two northern neighbors.

Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of attacking its towns to escape negotiating over the status of the mainly Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.