A picture obtained by AFP outside Iran shows shows a demonstrator in Tehran on September 19, 2022
A picture obtained by AFP outside Iran shows shows a demonstrator in Tehran on September 19, 2022 AFP

When Iran's ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi addressed the nation for the first time after the street protests by assertive young women a fortnight ago, he labeled the women protesters as agents of foreign powers, making it easy for Iran to target the neighboring oil-rich Kurdistan region.

"The enemy has targeted national unity and wants to pit people against each other," the president asserted, as Iranian women are up in arms against the elderly clerical establishment and the president who ordered a stricter application of the hijab laws earlier this summer.

The protests gathered more steam after the death of Mahsa Amini a fortnight ago. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman Amini, now a symbol of resistance to the regime who was from the northwestern Kurdish city of Saqez, breathed her last in police custody after she was arrested by the morality police in Tehran for not properly wearing a hijab.

The hijab has been compulsory for women in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the morality police enforce it.

Though women in Iran have full access to education and hold public office, they are required to dress modestly in public, which includes wearing the hijab.

Iran has accused armed Iranian Kurdish dissidents of spearheading the unrest, particularly in the northwest which houses Iran's more than 10 million Kurds.

These protests started in Iran's Kurdistan region, where Amini lived. Since Sep.16, and according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, at least 11 protesters have been killed in Kurdish cities.

The regime in Iran, battered by the persistence of the protesters after prominent Iranians, including musicians, actors, sportspersons and academics, extended their support to them, does not want the protests to extend to more places, and has portrayed the protesters as anti-patriotic liberals at odds with the values of the Islamic regime.

To quell the protests, Iran launched a deadly cross-border airstrike into northern Iraq on Sep. 28 to punish Kurds for their alleged support for demonstrations. More than 13 people were killed and 58 injured in the drone strikes at military bases owned by the exiled Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI).

The KDPI, a leftist armed opposition force that is banned in Iran, said in a statement that the attacks were carried out using missiles and drones.

The KPDI urged its supporters inside Iran to return to the streets and its spokesperson based in London said that support for these demonstrations is building.

According to Iran, the attacks were aimed at terrorist bases, while the U.S. described the strikes as brazen and an assault on Iraq's sovereignty.

Iraq's Foreign Ministry and the Kurdistan Regional Government have condemned the strikes.

Earlier, it was Turkey that was bombing Kurdistan to prevent it from achieving full nationhood. Now, Iran has turned its attention against a relatively peaceful Kurdish region which has essentially been a functioning nation since 1992. The nation-wide protest by assertive young women against the elderly clerical establishment and its diktat is simply blamed on the Autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq (with Erbil as its capital) as it has some of the greatest oil reserves in the world, and therefore attracting huge investments from the West.

The semi-official Kurdistan is one of the oil-rich territories of the region. At present, Kurdistan's oil reserves are pegged at 45 billion gallons, almost a third of Iraq's total untapped 150 billion gallons of petrol.

Currently, these oil resources are divided less along the border divisions of Kurdistan, i.e. Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The creation of an autonomous region within Syria, Iraq and Iran, called Kurdistan, requires an equitable division of oil.

The Sep. 28 attack was the latest by Iran, which is targeting Iraq's Kurdistan region in the past several days, alleging that Kurdish groups have been helping women demonstrators.

The protests, a serious challenge to the regime since 2009, are marked by unprecedented defiance by Iranian women, some of whom have removed and burned their headscarves before large crowds, or cut their hair.

At least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the stir by women began Sep. 17.