Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, simply called Ansar al-Islam, also nicknamed the Kurdish Taliban, is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al-Qaeda members, coming back from Afghanistan, in 2001. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state around the Kurdistan region. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border. Its ideology follows a traditionalist interpretation of the Quran and Salafism.
The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) or Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), is an Iranian political-militant organization. It advocates overthrowing the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and installing its own government. Its revolutionary interpretation of Islam contrasts with the conservative Islam of the traditional clergy as well as the populist version developed by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1970s. It is also Iran's largest and most active political opposition group.
The Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the primary intelligence agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a member of the Iran Intelligence Community. It is also known as VAJA and previously as VEVAK or alternatively MOIS. It was initially known as SAVAMA, after it took over the Shah's intelligence apparatus SAVAK. The ministry is one of the three "sovereign" ministerial bodies of Iran due to nature of its work at home and abroad.
Saeed Emami (Persian: سعید امامی; né Saeed Eslami; was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and adviser to the Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. He was appointed as deputy minister in security affairs and the second person of intelligence ministry when he was 32 years old. He is also considered as the designer and leader of many internal and extraterritorial intelligence operations during 90s, especially in the case of western countries, Israel and anti-revolutionary units. He was accused of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents.
Dariush Forouhar was an Iranian pan-Iranist politician and leader of Nation Party of Iran.
Kurdish Hezbollah known in Turkey as Hizbullah, and known among Kurds as Sofîk is a Kurdish Sunni Islamist militant organization, active against Turkey, and the PKK.
The Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK, is a Kurdish leftist anti-Islamic Republic of Iran armed militant group. It has waged an intermittent armed struggle since 2004 against the Iranian regime, seeking self-determination through some degree of autonomy for Kurds in Iran.
Ali Fallahian is an Iranian politician and cleric. He served as intelligence minister from 1989 to 1997 under the presidency of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani.
The chain murders of Iran were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other.
Numerous civilians, including men, women, children, government officials, activists, secular intellectuals and clerics have been victims of assassination, terrorism, or violence against non-combatants, over the course of modern Iranian history.
The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz is an Arab nationalist and separatist insurgent group which advocates the secession of Khuzestan Province from Iran and the establishment of an Arab state, a goal which it is attempting to achieve by waging a direct and violent conflict against Iran.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups. These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies; however, Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense in the face of Israeli military occupation.
Karim Mohammedzadeh was a Kurdish dissident who was assassinated in Sweden in 1990.
The Iran–PJAK conflict is an armed conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), which began in 2004. The group has carried out numerous attacks in the Kurdistan Province of Iran and provinces of Western Iran. PJAK is closely affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the primary opponent of the Republic of Turkey in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. PJAK has been designated as a terrorist organization by Iran, Japan, Turkey, and the United States.
Kurdish separatism in Iran or the Kurdish–Iranian conflict is an ongoing, long-running, separatist dispute between the Kurdish opposition in Western Iran and the governments of Iran, lasting since the emergence of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1918.
The insurgency by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran surged in 1989, lasting until 1996, as part of the Kurdish separatism struggle. The eruption of the conflict in July 1989 was caused by the assassination of KDPI leader Abdul Rahman Qassemlou by suspected Iranian government agents. The most violent episodes took place in 1990 and 1991, when Kurdish soldiers launched massive attacks on Iranian military bases in Kurdish areas of Iran. This brought heavy retaliation from the Iranian government, aiming to eradicate the KDPI leadership by assassinating Sadegh Sharafkandi and other KDPI leaders in 1992 in order to disable the Kurdish party's ability to function. The conflict faded with the effective targeted assassination policy of Iran and by 1996 KDPI was no longer able to function militarily and announced a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict claimed hundreds of lives, mostly Iranian government troops and Kurdish militants.
2016–present clashes in West Iran refers to the ongoing military clashes between Kurdish insurgent party Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which began in April 2016. Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) and Komalah expressed their support to the Kurdish cause of PDKI as well, with both clashing with Iranian security forces in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In parallel, a leftist Iranian Kurdish rebel group PJAK resumed military activities against Iran in 2016, following a long period of stalemate.
Mohammad-Reza Kolahi was a member of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) who, according to Iranian authorities, was suspected of planting a bomb at the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) that killed more than 70 officials on 28 June 1981. Kolahi was assassinated on 15 December 2015. The Islamic Republic of Iran is believed to have been behind the assassination. He reportedly was a freshman student of electrical engineering who worked as an electrician in the IRP.
On 8 September 2018, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) launched seven Fateh-110 missiles at the headquarters of two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in the town of Koya, in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region 300 km north of Iraq's capital, Baghdad. Initial reports from Iranian news agencies listed 11 killed people. Later reports indicated 18 people were killed.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian civil war for 2021. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian civil war.
