Araghchi: Turkey prevented implementation of plan to dismember Iran

Foreign Minister of Iran Abbas Araghchi in his video interview about the 40-day war stated that Turkey played an active role in preventing the penetration of armed Kurdish groups from northern Iraq into Iran and prevented the implementation of scenarios for the dismemberment of Iran.

As ArazNews reports, Araghchi claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump on the fourth day of the war contacted leaders of Iranian Kurdish armed groups in northern Iraq and supported their ground invasion of Iran. Upon learning of this, the Iranian minister contacted officials of the Iraqi Kurdistan, the prime minister of Iraq, and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to convey Tehran’s concerns.

According to the Iranian foreign minister, the Turkish government played an effective role in preventing this step: in addition to consultations with the United States, Ankara took a firm stance against the plan.

Earlier, former head of Israeli military intelligence Tamir Hayman claimed that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, upon learning of the plan, warned Trump in a conversation that if armed Kurdish groups entered Iran, Turkey was ready to intervene to counter them. As a result of these consultations, the United States abandoned the plan.

In this regard, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing events surrounding the war in Iran, emphasized that the positive atmosphere and channels of communication created during this process prevented the emergence of even greater unrest and crises that could have harmed all ethnic groups in the region. He also added that in the future it will become even more evident “how Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Persians thwarted a bloody and insidious game” and prevented the implementation of scenarios capable of drawing the region into larger conflicts.