Iraqi Kurdistan unjustifiably attacked and not a threat, says Barzani
Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region has been “unjustifiably targeted”, said the Prime Minister of the government, Masrour Barzani, after a lethal Iranian missile attack there last month.
“This aggression must end,” he said during the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
“As I have said, here and in other capitals, Kurdistan has never been a threat to anyone in the region.
“We are a factor for peace and stability, and we want regional conduct to be based on mutual respect and interests.”
The missile attack on Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, killed five people including entrepreneur Peshraw Dizayee and his two children.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Tehran’s militia network abroad, claimed it had hit a base hosting US military personnel and an Israeli Mossad headquarters in Erbil.
Mr Barzani, who has been Prime Minister of the region since 2019, rejected Tehran’s claims of an Israeli spy base, as did the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
The strikes occurred at a time of rising tensions between the US and Iran-backed militias in the Middle East over the suffering caused by the IsraelGaza war.
The militias have increased attacks against US and Israeli forces from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Iraq has suffered from an escalation in violence between
US forces and Iran-backed militias since the outbreak of the war in October.
Most of the US air strikes on Iran-backed militias have taken place in central or southern Iraq, but the Iranian attack on the Kurdish north threatened to spread the conflict there.
Mr Barzani, who is a member of the pro-independence Kurdish Democratic Party, used the platform of the World Governments Summit to link the Kurdish and Palestinian independence movements.
“The struggles of the past 20 years, and of the decades of Kurdish resistance that foreshadowed them, have enshrined for us a rightful stake as a sovereign people and an integral part of the Middle East,” he said.
He described the Gaza war as “deeply troubling” and called for the “root causes of the injustice” affecting Palestinians to be addressed.
“The crisis we are witnessing in Palestine is deeply troubling for many of us for several reasons: its humanitarian toll on civilians, its capacity to fuel chaos well beyond Gaza and because the root causes of the injustice remain unaddressed,” he said.
Mr Barzani’s comments came as concerns grew that Israel is preparing to launch a major military operation in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has vowed to eliminate the Hamas organisation and launched air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed more than 28,300 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It followed a Hamas attack on October 7 that killed about 1,200. The high Gaza death toll and humanitarian catastrophe caused by the war have renewed international efforts to find a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, with calls for a two-state solution.
Mr Barzani said that the “foundational rights” of both Palestinians and Kurds should have been addressed historically. “Had the foundational rights of the Palestinians been dealt with 80 years ago, or in the decades since, there would have been far less chance of the tragedy we are seeing now,” he said.
He said the same can be said for the “plight of the Kurdish people”. They “have legitimate claims towards self-determination”, he added.
“These are rights that have been acknowledged by our friends and allies, who at the same time tell us that political imperatives impede their help in delivering a historical justice,” Mr Barzani said.