Tehran says it struck Komala inside Iraqi Kurdistan, and Baghdad has said nothing

The Tehran semi-official agency Mehr reported on 25 October that “as part of a drone operation carried out by the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, the headquarters of the terrorist and separatist group Komala, located in the Balisan region, was targeted last night.” The line was picked up by the CBS News live file, updated 25 October at 3:55 PM EDT, by the Times of Israel’s 25 October liveblog, and by an AFP item carried on Arab News, all of them explicitly flagging it as Iranian-media sourcing. Both CBS and the Times of Israel noted that the Revolutionary Guards had not themselves claimed responsibility. The Files found no statement from the KRG Ministry of Interior, the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Joint Operations Command, or from Komala. There is no casualty figure in any version, and no independent confirmation that a strike occurred at all — only that Mehr says one did.

The claim arrives in the same news cycle as a second Iranian assertion. Al-Monitor’s Iraq page, as rendered on 25 October, leads with “Iran says deal reached with Iraq to expel Kurdish separatists,” with a standfirst stating that Tehran says it has an agreement with Baghdad to expel or hand over members of Kurdish separatist groups based in the Kurdistan Region. The Files has read the headline and standfirst only: no named Iranian official, no date for the claimed agreement, and no Iraqi response. The Times of Israel file supplies the background that holds both items together — the Kurdistan Region hosts camps and bases belonging to several Iranian Kurdish armed groups, which Iran has struck repeatedly since the war began in February 2026, and which Tehran accuses of acting with Israeli backing.

Assessment: Read the two items as one instrument: force applied in Balisan, and a political settlement advertised in Tehran as the thing that force is meant to produce. Both ends rest on Iranian sourcing, which is why neither should be reported as an event. The variable worth tracking is not the IRGC’s targeting logic — that belongs on the Iran desk — but the response in Baghdad and Erbil. A sovereignty violation that draws no foreign ministry protest after twenty-four hours is either a government that does not know, a government that cannot afford to object, or a government that has already conceded the point. The expulsion claim is designed to make the third reading look like the correct one. Treat the silence as the story until someone breaks it.