By Nassir Piroti

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee has said he does not see the armed Kurdish groups opposed to Tehran as a threat to the Islamic Republic.

“These groups are active in border regions and we do not view them as serious security threats,” said lawmaker Mohammad Reza Mohseni, who is also in charge of parliament’s foreign relations committee.

He told the Iranian media that the country is not “under any security threats.”

Referring to the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), the main remaining armed Kurdish opposition group, Mohseni said those fighters were operating sporadically in the border areas, which he dismissed as “nothing new.”

PJAK, which is believed to have close ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said in August that its forces had killed 20 Iranian soldiers in an attack on a border military post.

Tehran dismissed the claim, but confirmed that remote military bases had been attacked. The assault effectively ended a unilateral cease-fire, which PJAK had declared in 2011.

The two main Kurdish resistance groups in Iran, the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran and the Komala leftist faction, have virtually ended all military operations against Tehran since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

The groups are based in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s bordering towns.

With the Kurds militarily active in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, analysts view Iran’s vast Kurdish areas as the next trouble spot.

Mohseni dismissed any threats to the country, saying “security forces are fully in charge of the situation.”

The lawmaker acknowledged that ISIS had been recruiting in Iran’s Sunni regions, where he said some youth had joined the radical jihadi group for “material gains.”

Rudaw