Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants march in a line through the Qandil Mountains in Iraq on October 26, 2025 (local time). / Reuters Yonhap

Fox News reported on July 1 (local time) that recent daily armed clashes between Iranian Kurdish rebels—an anti-government militant group—and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and police forces could emerge as a new variable in supplementary negotiations for a ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran.

On June 30, an armed attack in Paveh, a city in western Iran's Kermanshah Province bordering Iraq, left two IRGC members dead and two others wounded, according to reports from the Jerusalem Post (JP) and Tasnim News Agency.

On the same day, in the border city of Baneh in Iran's northwestern Kurdistan Province, armed assailants attacked a police checkpoint, killing two police officers and injuring three people, including a three-year-old girl.

The recent armed clashes have been spreading to Paveh and surrounding areas, including Marivan and Mahabad.

A little-known militant group named "Khore Heba," meaning "Sun of Hope," claimed responsibility for the raid in Paveh.

The group stated that it carried out the attack to retaliate for the Iranian government's harsh crackdown on protests that erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman, in 2022.

Fox News, citing sources, also reported that a drone laden with explosives struck a camp of an Iranian Kurdish anti-government group in Koya (Koysinjaq), located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, early on the morning of July 2.

According to Reuters, no casualties have been reported from the attack, and no group has yet claimed responsibility for the operation. However, attention is mounting over its potential link to the preceding attacks inside Iran.

The Kurds, the largest stateless ethnic group in the Middle East, reside across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Türkiye.

                                                                                                           Kim Hyun-min