Iran continues to face obstacles in silencing its armed opponents in Iraqi Kurdistan, where authorities recently offered Tehran assurances to prevent Iranian Kurdish militants from causing tension with Tehran.
At 4 p.m. March 1 in Binaslawa town just outside Erbil, Salah Rahmani, a veteran peshmerga forces commander with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), got into his car outside his house with his 32-year-old son Sabah. Shortly after the vehicle was started, a blast from a bomb stuck on the vehicle echoed across the town popular with Iranian Kurdish exiles. While Rahmani suffered minor injuries, his son — who worked in a bakery and has a 3-year-old daughter — died from his wounds the following morning. Rahmani, a peshmerga since 1980, is known for his fighting qualities earned from years of battling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
