Iraq will reassign federal forces to the Iran and Turkish borders

Baghdad: Baghdad announced on Wednesday it wanted to redeploy federal guards along its borders with Iran and Turkey, following repeated attacks by both of its neighbors against opposition groups in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.

The announcement seemed specifically in response to Iran, which has publicly advocated such a move.

"The decision to establish a plan to redeploy Iraqi border guards

According to a statement released after the meeting, a government security meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani was made on the border with Iran and Turkey.

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According to the statement, the initiative will be carried out "in coordination with the government of Kurdistan Region and the Ministry of the Peshmerga", referring to the Kurdish regional forces, whose chiefs were also present.

The Peshmerga currently guard the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan, but they are subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died on September 16 after being detained by Tehran's morality police, sparked a wave of protests that Iran has accused of deporting foreign powers and Kurdish organizations .

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdullahian issued a warning on Wednesday, saying Tehran would continue to act against "threats" from abroad.

Unless Iraqi national forces are deployed to the border and "we will no longer need to act to protect our territorial integrity," he said, Iran will continue its military operations inside Iraqi Kurdistan.

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Nasser Kanani, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, expressed hope earlier this week that Iraq's administration would "send border guards to the common border, so that Iran does not have to take other preventive measures to address threats."

A delegation of the Peshmerga met with officials from the ministries of interior and defense in Baghdad on Tuesday. According to a statement by Kurdish officials, they "decided on a strategy aimed at increasing border security and implementing procedures to be followed in the near future."

Kurdistan's head of foreign media relations, Lauk Ghafuri, also informed AFP on Wednesday that "peshmerga forces would be sent as reinforcements to the border" by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Since the 1980s, Iraqi Kurdistan has served as the home base for several Iranian-Kurdish opposition organizations that have engaged in armed insurgency against Tehran in the past.

Although their activities have decreased in recent years, the latest round of Iranian protests has raised tensions once again. Following a deadly bombing in Istanbul on 13 November, for which the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party has been blamed,

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Ankara launched Operation Claw-Sword on Sunday (PKK), a campaign of airstrikes on Kurdish forces in various parts of Iraq and Syria.