Iran’s double game: cooperates with Turkey, but sells weapons to the Kurds

Turkey’s relationship with Iran has been blossoming in recent months, it seems, and both countries are joining hands in criticizing Israel. But in the past week, a reason for severe tensions between Ankara and Tehran has become more visible again: the extensive supply of ammunition by the Ayatollahs’ regime to the Kurdish underground (PKK) in Iraq.

The latest development that worries Ankara is the use by the Kurdish underground of an Iranian-made air defense system, in order to intercept the unmanned aerial vehicles with which the Turkish army routinely attacks targets in northern Iraq.

There is an irony in the Turkish situation, since it was recently discovered that the Kurdish underground uses the 358 system: stray missiles that are not aimed at a specific target, but when they find the target – they are aimed at it and hit. The 358s do fly slowly, but their propulsion is jet and not rocket. This is why even though they fly slowly, if a missile misses then it may turn around and still hit the target.

These are the same missiles that Tehran regularly supplies to Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels and the rest of the pro-Iranian militias. Moreover, after Turkey sent journalists from state media to cover the Houthi rebels and the Lebanese Hezbollah as seemingly legitimate entities, while they intercepted the American MQ-9 Reaper drones in Yemen and the Israeli Hermes models in Lebanon, those missiles were directed at its means.

Iraq is demonstrating independence

The timing of the Iranian supplies in recent months to the Kurdish underground operating in northern Iraq cannot be separated from the events in the region in general, and in Iraq in particular. First and foremost, the war of iron swords diverts world attention, and allows the Ayatollah regime to pursue its interests in places where it has not done so until now.

Beyond that, Iraq, a neighbor of Iran, has recently introduced a policy of international cooperation, from which Tehran is absent. About three months ago, Turkey and Iraq decided to promote a land corridor project, which includes a transportation connection between the two, which will actually enable a connection of Ankara to the Shat al-Arab river, and from there to the Persian Gulf. The budget of the project, which was named “Development Road”, and is approximately 1,200 km long, is estimated at 17 billion dollars. For the required security stability, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke of the need for a military operation in northern Iraq to eradicate the Kurdish underground. And now , precisely after that statement, Iranian capability was manifested in the hands of Turkey’s rivals.

Another issue in Iraqi independence is Baghdad’s choice to grant ten Chinese companies oil and gas exploration ventures in the country, out of a tender of 21 projects. China is far from being an enemy of Iran, but the Ayatollah regime operates militias in Iraq, and wants the Iraqi dependence on it to remain and even increase. Today, for example, Iran supplies Iraq with 1.2 gigawatts of electricity and natural gas to produce 2.8 gigawatts, which together make up a third of the country’s electricity needs.

At the same time, similar to other terrorist organizations in the world, the Kurdish underground in Iraq bases its income on illegal sources. According to an article in the Turkish state news agency Anadolu, the underground brings in 1.5 billion dollars annually from the drug trade. This source of income is critical for providing salaries to its operatives, and it is not known what amounts the Kurdish underground pays to Iran, if any, for the 358 missiles.

An Iraqi source close to the Kurdish underground told “Middle East Eye” that Iran supplies the missile systems disassembled into components, and the underground people assemble them. The method of transporting missiles in parts is not foreign to Iran, and the IRGC’s Quds Force has been conducting this method with the Houthi rebels and Hezbollah for years. However, the fact that the Ayatollah regime chooses to give the Kurdish underground the knowledge of its assembly is of considerable significance.

An Iraqi body that is bigger than the Kurdish underground, and has the knowledge of assembling and using 358 missiles, is Hashd al-Shaabi, the umbrella organization of the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. Hashd al-Shaabi, who participated in the April 14 attack against Israel, and as a matter of routine publish launches with claims of hitting strategic targets, are critical for the Ayatollahs’ regime, because not only are they pro-Iranian militias – they are not budgeted for in the Iranian budget at all.

Will the cooperation continue?

Unlike parallel militias, the financing of Hashd al-Shaabi is backed by the base of the Iraqi budget, apparently as part of Baghdad’s security forces. In June of last year, the Iraqi parliament approved the budgets for 2023-2025, amounting to approximately 153 billion dollars per year. As part of this, the budget of Hashd al-Sha’abi jumped by approximately 700 million dollars to approximately 2.88 billion dollars, with the goal that the number of soldiers will be almost doubled, from approximately 122 thousand to approximately 238 thousand.

It is relatively convenient for Baghdad to budget for the suspicion of al-Shaabi because they are not only pro-Iranians. Most of them are Shiites, Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, al-Shuhada, al-Nujba, Badr and Imam Ali brigades, but there are others as well. The Salah al-Din battalions are Sunni, and there are also the Turkmen battalions, the Babylonian battalion which are Assyrian, and the 80th battalion which is based on Yazidis.

It will be interesting to see how Iranian cooperation with the Kurdish underground will continue, and whether it will include the suspected al-Shaabi. What is clear is that any tightening of this relationship will be in complete opposition to the interests of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Muhammad Shia.