Iranian Army adviser Brig. Gen. Mojtaba Jafari said the Army's 23rd Airborne Special Forces Brigade had carried out 14 ground operations in the Sulaymaniyah and Erbil provinces of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Region over the past two months.
According to Jafari, several of the operations took place in recent days, during a period in which Iran was holding talks with the United States. He said Iranian forces abducted two Kurdish operatives from Sulaymaniyah on Sunday. Several Kurdish opposition operatives were killed and others captured in the operations, Jafari said, adding that the brigade suffered no casualties.
The 23rd Airborne Special Forces Brigade, also known as the Takavar Brigade, is the Iranian Army's largest special forces unit. It does not operate under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, which is responsible for most of the Islamic Republic's covert activities abroad. The brigade was established as a reconnaissance and commando force, but its capabilities were later expanded to include airborne operations. It uses aging US-made Bell helicopters. The unit comprises five battalions and is believed to have operated on a limited scale during the Syrian civil war.
The raids appear to be part of an ongoing Iranian campaign of retaliation that began after the possibility was raised during Operation Roaring Lion of using Iranian Kurdish underground forces based in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Region to invade Iran and topple the ayatollahs' regime. US President Donald Trump later criticized the Kurds, claiming they had "stolen" weapons provided to them for delivery to the Iranian opposition.
