Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had struck positions of Kurdish fighters it accused of preparing to enter the country through its western borders, inflicting heavy losses on them, according to a statement carried by state media on Thursday.
The ministry said the operation was carried out jointly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and resulted in the destruction of bases and ammunition depots belonging to the groups.
“Separatist terrorist groups intended to enter the country through the western borders, with the support of the American and Zionist enemy, and carry out attacks in urban and border areas,” the ministry said. “A significant portion of their positions and facilities were destroyed and heavy losses were inflicted.”
The statement added that Iranian forces were coordinating with Kurdish residents in border areas to monitor movements and prevent attacks.
“Armed forces and intelligence units, with the cooperation of courageous Kurdish compatriots, will thwart the American-Zionist enemy’s plans for any aggression against the country’s territory,” the ministry said.
Border officials reject infiltration reports
Local authorities in the western border region denied reports that armed fighters had entered Iran.
“No report of infiltration or illegal movement of armed groups has been registered in this part of the border,” the governor of Qasr-e Shirin on the Iraqi border said, according to Iranian media.
The reports circulating on social media about armed groups crossing the western border had no factual basis, the governor added.
Meanwhile, Nechirvan Barzani, president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, said on Thursday that the autonomous region would not be part of any military confrontation or escalation.
A spokesperson for Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government also denied reports.
“Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government denies reports claiming it is involved in plans to arm Kurdish opposition groups and send them into Iran,” the spokesperson said. “The Kurdistan Regional Government is not part of any campaign to expand war or tensions in the region.”
After joint Israeli-US strikes on Iran, the Islamic Republic and allied Shiite militias launched ballistic missile and drone attacks on Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, which hosts several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in exile.
The strikes mainly targeted the regional capital, Erbil, where explosions, air-raid sirens and missile interceptions were reported.
Regional responses and US position
Regional officials and Washington also commented on Kurdish groups. Turkey said it was closely monitoring the activities of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish opposition group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
“The activities of groups that fuel ethnic separatism, such as the terrorist organization PJAK, negatively affect not only Iran's security but also the overall peace and stability of the region,” Turkey’s defense ministry told a weekly briefing in Ankara.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rejected reports that Washington planned to arm Kurdish groups.
“All I would say is none of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force,” Hegseth said during a briefing on Wednesday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also dismissed reports that the administration was considering supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters to spark an uprising inside Iran, saying the claims had “no factual basis.”
The reports come amid speculation that Iranian Kurdish groups could play a role in the wider conflict.
Earlier this week, Axios reported that several Kurdish factions based in Iraq had recently formed a coalition and were preparing for a possible ground offensive into northwestern Iran, citing US and Israeli officials and a source within one of the groups.
The report said some fighters had moved closer to the border in recent weeks, though Kurdish factions have publicly denied launching any attack.
Axios also reported that US President Donald Trump had spoken with Kurdish leaders in Iraq about the war with Iran, while Israeli officials were said to be exploring ways Kurdish forces could increase pressure on Tehran.
Kurds are an ethnic group concentrated mainly in parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, with communities also elsewhere; because Iran does not publish official ethnic census data, estimates of the Kurdish population in Iran vary widely, commonly ranging from about 7 million to 15 million people, or roughly 8% to 17% of the population, with most living in Iran’s western and northwestern provinces near the borders with Iraq and Turkey.
Several Iranian Kurdish opposition parties based largely in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region – including Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) – have generally framed their demands around political rights and Kurdish self-rule within Iran, often describing that goal as autonomy in a federal system, while PJAK, an Iran-based Kurdish armed group aligned with the broader PKK-linked network, has advocated more sweeping political change and Kurdish self-determination.
York Regional Police said officers responded shortly after 3 a.m. on March 1 to reports of gunfire at a commercial plaza north of Toronto, where investigators found damage consistent with multiple rounds fired at a business. The building was unoccupied at the time and no injuries were reported.
Surveillance footage shows a suspect dressed in dark clothing exiting a dark-colored sport utility vehicle before fleeing the scene, police said.
The targeted business, Saliwan Boxing, is owned by Salar Gholami, an Iranian-Canadian political activist and Canadian cruiserweight boxing champion who has organized demonstrations against the Islamic Republic across the Greater Toronto Area in recent months.
The shooting came hours after supporters gathered at the gym and elsewhere in Toronto following US and Israeli military strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, events that drew large crowds waving Iran’s Lion and Sun flag.
“Seventeen bullets in the middle of Toronto,” Gholami told Iran International. “This is not just about the Iranian community anymore. It’s about Canadians.”
Gholami said the gym is used by families, teenagers and children and could have been occupied when the shots were fired.
“Our gym is just a regular gym. Girls, teenagers, kids,” he said. “The shooting at the gym... is so dangerous.”
He said he believes the attack may have been intended as a warning linked to his activism, though police said no motive has been confirmed.
York Regional Police acknowledged concerns within the community that the incident could be connected to broader geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Investigators said they are working with policing and intelligence partners and reviewing all available evidence, including the possibility of politically motivated or transnational elements.
Canadian intelligence officials have previously warned that Iranian state actors and their proxies have targeted dissidents abroad, including individuals living in Canada. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has said it has disrupted potentially lethal threats linked to foreign interference operations in past cases.
Former Canadian Justice minister Irwin Cotler, for example, was previously the subject of an alleged Iranian plot to kill him on Canadian soil.
Gholami said he has remained in contact with police following the shooting but expressed concern about security arrangements, saying he was told additional protection would need to be arranged privately.
“We came here for freedom,” he said. “Canada must protect its citizens. I’m Canadian too.”
Despite the attack, he said he intends to continue organizing demonstrations.
“I will not give up,” Gholami said. “They may be able to take my life, but they cannot take our honor.”
Iran International contacted Public Safety Canada to ask whether additional protections are being considered for Iranian-Canadian activists amid concerns about transnational repression. The department did not respond before publication.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on Saturday morning in US and Israeli air strikes. On Tuesday, according to exclusive information obtained by Iran International, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, under pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), chose his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the next Supreme Leader. The decision has not been made public and is expected to be announced after Ali Khamenei is buried.
This is not a routine succession. It is a wartime decision shaped by the security state, and it raises serious questions about constitutional procedure. The priority appears to be speed and control, as the Islamic Republic faces attacks from outside and a leadership vacuum at the top.
Why the IRGC pushed Mojtaba
The IRGC needed two things at the same time: control and legitimacy.
Control means keeping the chain of command intact, preventing splits at the top, keeping the security forces coordinated, and stopping a scramble for power. In this crisis, the IRGC’s first priority is internal stability.
Legitimacy matters too, but not in a broad national sense. It means legitimacy inside the regime’s core base: hard-line politicians, the security institutions, and the loyal networks that still see the Islamic Republic as “their” state. In that narrow world, Mojtaba has something others do not. He can claim direct continuity with Khamenei, and the core base can accept him without feeling the system has broken.
That combination is why the IRGC chose him.
Mojtaba also has long-standing ties to the IRGC, going back decades, and deep relationships across its command networks. For years, he has been a key channel between his father and the Guard’s leadership. That gives him a rare position. He is close to the security core, but also linked to the civilian and clerical leadership that depends on it.
He has also effectively run the Supreme Leader’s office, the Beit, for at least the past two decades, and is widely seen as Ali Khamenei’s closest confidant. The Beit is not just a state within the state. It is the core of the state itself. In practice, Iran’s elected government and president are often a façade, with little real power. Real authority has long sat in the Beit, which controls key security, political and financial levers. That is why this apparatus is now protecting itself, and why it does not want an outsider coming in and taking control.
The Islamic Republic at a fork in the road
The Islamic Republic now faces two broad directions.
One is to keep fighting, stay defiant, absorb more damage, and try to outlast the attacks. That would likely mean tighter internal control, the dispersal of forces and assets, and heavier reliance on asymmetric pressure, including missiles, drones, proxies, and covert operations, while signalling that the state will not negotiate under fire.
The other is to step back and accept major concessions to stop the war and reduce pressure. That would mean giving up key pillars of Iran’s regional and military posture in return for a halt to attacks and some easing of pressure.
Mojtaba is well placed to pursue either path.
If the system chooses a bitter deal, it needs someone who can own it and stop the hardcore from turning on the leadership. If it chooses to fight on, it needs someone who can keep the IRGC united and keep the security state functioning under sustained attack. That is the political function of this succession.
The main question now is whether Israel and the US will target him immediately or give him time to make that choice. If they strike him straight away, it will be hard to avoid one conclusion: the campaign is no longer about pressure or deterrence. It is about regime change. If they hold back, the focus shifts to Mojtaba’s next move, and whether he chooses escalation or a climbdown.
The problem of blood and revenge
Any agreement with Donald Trump was always difficult for Ali Khamenei. In Tehran’s narrative, Trump sought Iran’s “surrender” and had the blood of Qasem Soleimani on his hands. Khamenei repeatedly ruled out reconciliation and called for qisas, a concept in Islamic law meaning retribution, often understood as “life for life.”
For his successor, the burden is heavier. Trump now carries not only Soleimani’s blood, but also Ali Khamenei’s. That makes any compromise far harder to sell, and it also raises the domestic stakes for any decision to escalate.
Mojtaba has one advantage inside the system. He can present himself as the person entitled to decide what comes next. If the leadership chooses to fight on, he can frame it as continuity, duty, and retaliation. If it chooses to pause revenge and prioritise survival, he can frame it as a decision made by the heir and the family, not as a humiliation forced from the outside.
Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, set the guiding rule in a line that has the force of a fatwa in Shia political doctrine: “Preserving the system is the highest duty.” In plain terms, it means the survival of the Islamic Republic comes before almost everything else. As vali-e dam, the next of kin with the right to demand retribution, Mojtaba can argue that he also has the right to set it aside if the state’s survival requires it. That is how he can ask the regime’s core base to accept restraint, and present it not as retreat, but as obedience to a higher obligation.
What stepping back would mean in practice
If Mojtaba chooses regime survival over confrontation, the price will be high. A serious de-escalation would likely mean accepting Trump’s demands, including:
For Mojtaba, accepting these would not just be a policy shift. It would mean dismantling his father’s 37-year legacy in a single afternoon.
Without real and verifiable change in these areas, the US and Israel would have little reason to stop.
Even then, a deal would not solve the regime’s deeper problem at home. Legitimacy inside Iranian society is badly damaged, especially after the January massacre, and the state is widely seen as corrupt, incompetent, and violent. A ceasefire might stop the bombs, but it would not stop the political decay.
Where this leaves the Islamic Republic
If Mojtaba keeps the hard line while the world’s most powerful military is striking alongside the region’s most capable one, the window for a new leader to consolidate may be measured in days, not months.
If he chooses a climbdown, the war may stop, but the inheritance remains bleak. He would be taking ownership of painful concessions that undo much of his father’s legacy, while inheriting a state that is badly broken. The Islamic Republic is facing something close to a failed-state reality: an economy in severe distress, hollowed-out institutions, and public hostility so high that normal governance becomes hard to sustain. A halt in attacks would not restore capacity, trust, or authority.
Either way, Mojtaba Khamenei begins in the ruins of his father’s world. The Islamic Republic’s options are all expensive, its survival is no longer guaranteed, and for the first time in forty years, time is the one thing Tehran cannot buy.
