The Kurds were sentenced to death in 2008 for belonging to a Kurdish separatist group called the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PEJAK, which is fighting for Kurdish autonomy, and for carrying out bombings.

PEJAK is the Iranian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is fighting for an autonomous Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey, and has bases in northern Iraq.

The Kurds were hanged in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison along with an ethnic Iranian sentenced to death for participating the bombing of a Shiite religious center in 2008.

Sepah News, the agency run by Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, reported Wednesday that five Kurdish separatists were killed in a gun battle with the guards in the city of Dalahu in Iran's Kurdish zone.

The Tehran regime has been fighting Kurdish separatists in a low-intensity conflict in northwestern Iran along the border with Iraq since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

But in recent years ethnic armed insurrection has broken out in other border province such as Sistan-Baluchistan in the southeast on the Afghan frontier and in Arab-dominated Khuzestan in the southwest, the center of Iran's oil industry. There is also unrest in Azerbaijan.

Tehran claims these uprisings by largely Sunni Muslims against the Shiite-dominated state are funded and armed by the United States, Britain and Israel.

The fighting with the Kurdish separatists has worsened in recent months amid persistent reports that the Israelis are active in supporting the rebels.

Three Revolutionary Guards were killed by separatists in the town of Khoy in the Kurdish region near the Turkish border in late April following the assassination of the town's prosecutor weeks earlier.

In February, Iranian state media reported Ministry of Intelligence agents had killed four insurgents in an ambush near the Iraqi border. The slain separatists had reportedly killed three policemen Dec. 26.

The Revolutionary Guards regularly shell PEJAK bases in the Qandil Mountains of northeastern Iraq.

The insurgents in Sistan-Baluchistan, who are allegedly controlled by the Americans and Pakistan's intelligence services, have been fighting the central government since 2003 in one of Iran's poorest and most neglected provinces. The 4 million population is largely Sunni and accuses Tehran of repression.

The rebel group Jundullah, or Soldiers of God, assassinated half a dozen top Revolutionary Guard generals in a suicide bombing in the provincial capital, Zahedan, Oct. 18, 2009. It was the heaviest blow Jundullah had struck against the regime.

But the Guards and their covert operations wing retaliated Feb. 23 with the capture of Jundullah's founder and leader, Abdulmalik Rigi, in a clandestine operation outside the country.

In a televised confession, he claimed the CIA and its allies aided Jundullah. U.S. officials have dismissed that as political theater by the Iranians.

But his capture dealt a decisive and possibly deadly blow to the organization, which had emerged from what had started as a tribal revolt against the central government and became a secessionist movement with distinct ethnic and religious overtones.

Jundullah's activities have decreased sharply since Rigi was seized in what was a major triumph for the guards.

It remains to be seen whether the group will recover but it seems clear the group has been heavily infiltrated by the guards' highly effective intelligence arm.

"Rigi's capture bolstered Tehran's hand during a period when the Islamic Republic continues to be subject to a U.S.-led campaign that threatens to impose harsh economic sanctions as punishment for its nuclear program," the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank that monitors global security, said in a recent analysis.

There has been speculation that anti-regime activity will build up as Tehran braces for the threatened sanctions and a possible military strike by Israel.

"The United States is, in effect, conducting a secret war against Tehran, a covert campaign aimed at recruiting Iran's ethnic and religious minorities … into a movement to topple the government in Tehran," says Justin Raimondo, editorial director of the Antiwar.com Web site.

"We are on a collision course with Tehran and both sides know it."

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News