The IRGC Will Stop at Nothing to Punish Iranian Protesters

I happened to be conducting interviews with recent Iranian refugees and opposition activists within these movements at the time of the attacks. I had visited both of the targeted facilities three days earlier. As news of the strikes came in, I was at a Kurdish Freedom Party—or PAK—base location close to Erbil that houses many recent arrivals from across the border in Iran.

During the strike, fighters, refugees and civilians rapidly made for the mountains surrounding the base. It was a well-rehearsed drill; the PAK was targeted during IRGC attacks in September. In prior incidents, the missiles and drones came in waves and people died or were wounded as they left their shelters, thinking the attack was over. So Karim, my local guide, and I crouched in the mountains for a few hours, until the all-clear came in, speaking to refugees, participants in the demonstrations and young Iranian Kurdish activists.

Western media have portrayed the Iranian uprising as a largely female protest against laws requiring compulsory head coverings. I’ve seen a broader youth movement. Iranians are fed up with poor living conditions stemming from authoritarian rule. The mullahs have tried to smother the protests under a blanket of silence, preventing all domestic media coverage. But from my vantage point on the Iraq-Iran border, the story that emerged on the hardscrabble mountains was one of desperate determination.

Hussein, 27, is a house painter from Saqqez, the hometown of

Mahsa Amini,

whose death at the hands of Iran’s morality police sparked the current unrest. He joined the protests in their first days following Amini’s killing. “Like thousands of other young people, in Iran, my conditions are lousy. I’m tired of it,” he tells Karim and me, crouching on a ledge on the mountain by Koya, with his wife and young son beside him. They are wearing surgical masks. Even now, across the border in Iraq, they don’t want strangers to see their faces.

Hussein’s involvement in the uprising was brief. After four days, the authorities told his family that he had been identified at the protests in Saqqez. “Two of my friends had been arrested. Two others badly wounded, no one knows where they are,” he said. “How did they recognize me? They have plain clothes people among the demonstrators, taking pictures. So they came to my parent’s house, asking for me,” he told us. “Then they took my sister’s phone and called me. When I answered, they said: ‘We’re coming for you, you son of a b—.’ ” He gathered his family and headed for the mountains the next day. “They have started sentencing people to be executed for taking part in the protests.”

We heard countless variants of this story. Young women we interviewed mentioned the added fear of sexual violence at the hands of the authorities if apprehended.

Mafriz, 19, joined the female fighters’ battalions of the PAK. She participated in the demonstrations at the start, and made for the mountains after the authorities demanded she report to the local police station. “They said a camera set up by a shop had photographed me at one of the protests.”

For all the courage of these young Iranians opposing the regime, their odds of winning seem steep. Their demands are clear. They want the end of the Islamic Republic—and, for the Kurds, an independent and free Kurdistan. But there are few signs of cracks in the regime’s edifice. Most notably, no internal revolutionary leadership appears to exist. The cries of despair from these young Iranians have not yet coalesced into a revolutionary moment.

Inside Iran, the clashes between protesters and the government are growing in violence and intensity. So why is the regime targeting the bases of small dissident Kurdish political groups in northern Iraq? These groups are playing an auxiliary role in the protests, and no one—themselves included—thinks they are running the show. The mullahs may be hoping to shore up their story that foreigners and separatists are behind the unrest. The drones firing deadly missiles on Koya and Suleimaniya are merely servicing this lie.

The Kurdish dissidents here are sweeping up and burying the dead. The downfall of the regime seems distant. The protests continue. No one thinks this week’s attack will be the last.

Mr. Spyer is director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and director of research at the Middle East Forum. He is author of “Days of the Fall: A Reporter’s Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars.”