Iran also has various means of affecting developments in Kurdistan. Economically, the Iranian border is a lifeline to the PUK and Gorran heartlands. The border is even more important in light of continuing intra-Kurdish disputes. Iran could economically strangle certain areas of the KRG. "Iran's strategy in Iraq is a policy of divide and rule," Joost Hiltermann, the program director for the Middle East and North Africa for the International Crisis Group, told Al-Monitor. "Kurdish society is very divided at the moment and Iran has a chance to exploit those divisions."
Iran would lose much of this leverage were Kurdish parties to put aside their differences, because there is major trading activity across the KRG's border with Turkey, which could serve the entire region from east to west. All this depends on the level of coordination between Iran and Turkey, which also opposes steps toward Kurdish independence in Iraq.
As the commander of an influential military force in the area, Soleimani plays a prominent role in Iran's security apparatus in the KRG. Iran has a major security presence throughout the region. There are also Iranian Kurdish opposition factions operating from Iraqi Kurdish territory that occasionally use it as a launchpad for attacks on Iranian soil. This has prompted Iran to beef up its presence in the KRG. David Pollock of the Washington Institute cited a Gorran movement official as saying that Iranian agents have 700 safe houses in Sulaimaniyah alone.
Hemn Seyedi, a former leading official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran, which is a splinter of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), told Al-Monitor, "In the last two decades, Iran has carried out dozens of security operations on Iraqi Kurdish soil. It has assassinated dozens of Kurdish opposition activists and bombed KDPI bases during incursions on KRG territory."
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