ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday stressed it will respond to a deadly attack in western Iran’s (Rojhelat) Kurdistan province that killed two of its members. 

An attack in Kurdistan province’s Sarvabad County on Tuesday killed two IRGC members and injured three others. Iranian semi-official media blamed “counter-revolutionary groups” for the clashes, which took place in an area bordering the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. 

“We warn the mercenaries and hireling counter-revolutionaries that this crime will not go unanswered,” the IRGC’s Hamza Sayyid al-Shuhada command center, responsible for parts of Iran’s western Kurdish areas, said in a statement. 

It further vowed to “deliver a strong and crushing response to the perpetrators of this despicable and futile act.” 

No group has claimed responsibility for the assault, but Iran routinely targets and clashes with Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups in the area. 

The groups, namely the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Komala, the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), are based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and designated “terrorists” by Tehran. 

Iran has frequently carried out cross-border attacks into the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to target the groups, which seek greater rights for Iran’s marginalized Kurdish population and have fought an on-and-off conflict with the Islamic republic for decades. 

In 2023, Iraq and Iran signed a security agreement under which Baghdad pledged to disarm and relocate these Iranian Kurdish opposition groups from border areas, following repeated warnings from Tehran.