Iran Deploys Artillery, Troops To Kurdish Border Areas Amid Renewed War Fears

Kurdish and Middle East regional news sources are saying Iran's military is building up artillery and personnel in the country's northwest Kurdish regions bordering Iraq amid an intensifying crackdown on Kurdish opposition groups, and as Israel and the US threaten new attacks.

In particular, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) is being targeted, amid reports of recent clashes with security forces in the Shaho Mountains and other areas along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Kurdish population of Iran is a very sizeable minority of the country, commonly estimated at 10-15 million people primarily living in the northwestern and western areas of the country. Millions of Kurds also live on the Iraqi side of the border 

There's been an intensified target on Kurdish dissident groups given that in the opening months of Trump's Operation Epic Fury, US and Israeli officials openly talked about arming Kurdish groups along the Iran-Iraq border area.

Some reports said this external covert weaponization and funding campaign in order to put pressure on Tehran was already in full swing, but a slew of Kurdish political leaders in Iraq vehemently denied the reports.

Rudaw news reports from Irbil, "Iran has deployed artillery and heavy weaponry to Kurdish areas in the west of the country amid growing fears of a wider conflict with Israel and the United States, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intensifies operations against armed opposition groups along the country's western and southeastern frontiers."

According to more from the Kurdish media report:

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported late Wednesday that IRGC forces and military convoys carrying heavy and semi-heavy weapons had been deployed from other provinces to several cities in Iran's Kurdish region, including Sanandaj, Kamyaran, Sarvabad, Marivan and Baneh.

An informed source in Kamyaran told the rights network that "hundreds of IRGC special forces, believed to be members of the entity's Saberin Unit, have been dispatched over the past few weeks in military convoys to areas surrounding villages on the slopes of Mount Shaho in Kamyaran County."

There have been prior reports of sporadic drone activity and artillery fire in the areas of Shaho and Marivan.

These flare-ups have long predated the current US-Iran war, but the heightened state of alert and growing temperature of the region could bring an intensification to Tehran's anti-Kurdish opposition crackdown.