By: Struan Stevenson
Oct. 24 (UPI) -- The interference of the Iranian terrorist commander Qasem Soleimani in the internal affairs of Iraq has reached scandalous proportions that should sound alarm bells in the West.It has emerged that the general, who commands the terrorist Quds Force, responsible for foreign operations by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, orchestrated the reoccupation of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk
and many other Kurdish regions in Northern Iraq.
Kirkuk and other disputed areas bordering Kurdistan had been held by the Iraqi Kurds for the past two years after the Kurdish Peshmerga military force successfully ousted the Islamic State. The Americans recently listed the IRGC as an international terrorist organization; the Quds Force has been on terrorist blacklists for years.
The Iraqi federal government had been reeling from the apparent takeover of Kirkuk by the Kurds. There was also increasing tension and splits within Kurdistan itself, with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main parties controlling the KRG and the main opposition to Barzani's ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party.
It now seems that some of the leaders of the PUK, close allies of the Iranian regime, met with Soleimani in the city of Sulaimania the day before the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered Iraqi military forces and pro-Iranian militias, such as Hashd al-Shaabi, to reoccupy Kirkuk. Barzani, his party and many Kurdish leaders and parties have accused some of the leaders of the PUK of betraying Kirkuk and the martyrs who died rescuing the city from IS.
Many of the PUK's senior officials and members of the Peshmerga have condemned those leaders who have betrayed them.
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