Iran President Warns Iraq Against Hosting ‘Disruptive Presence’

Accuses Kurdish region of 'negligence' in hosting Israel

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has issued a statement warning Iraq to be more careful not to host groups on their soil that attempt to disrupt Iran’s security. This centers around claims that Israel carried out an attack in Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan.

This was the justification Iran used for rocket fire against Iraqi Kurdistan, which they said targeted an Israeli site there. Raisi accused the Kurdish region of “negligence” in hosting Israel for such an incident.

Iraqi leaders have long promised that their territory won’t be used as a staging ground to threaten its neighbors, but has had trouble maintaining that position in practice, with Israel setting up shop in Kurdistan as they did, and a lot of cross-border attacks from western Iraq into eastern Syria.

None of this was deliberate by Iraq’s central government, but so far they seem not to be taking steps to prevent future incidents, and are just denying that anything of the sort happened.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.