PJAK - Relation To United States Government and Military Structures

Relation To United States Government and Military Structures

According to Iranian PressTV new agency, in early August 2011 US military officials met in Iraq with members of PJAK and promised them with weapons and financial aid. Iranian officials have stated that PJAK attacks come "with the support of America and the Zionist regime".

On April 18, 2006, US Congressman, Dennis Kucinich sent a letter to US president George W. Bush in which he expressed his judgment that the US is likely to be supporting and coordinating PJAK, since PJAK operates and is based in Iraqi territory, which is under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

In November 2006, journalist Seymour Hersh writing in The New Yorker, supported this claim, stating that the US military and the Israelis are giving the group equipment, training, and targeting information in order to create internal pressures in Iran. According to French journalist Thierry Meyssan, author of 9/11: The Big Lie, American support for PJAK is a part of the US strategy to reshape the greater middle east.

The United States government and PJAK officially deny cooperation. In one of the first actions of the Obama administration, PJAK was declared a terrorist organization, freezing any assets the PJAK has under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting American citizens from doing business with the organization.

In an interview with Slate magazine in June 2006, when PJAK spokesman Ihsan Warya was paraphrased as stating that he "nevertheless points out that PJAK really does wish it were an agent of the United States, and that disappointed that Washington hasn't made contact." The Slate article continues stating that the PJAK wishes to be supported by and work with the United States in overthrowing the government of Iran in a similar way to the US eventually cooperated with Kurdish organisations in Iraq in overthrowing the government of Iraq during the most recent Iraq war.

In August 2007, the leader of PJAK visited Washington, DC in order to seek more open support from the US both politically and militarily but it was later said that he only made limited contacts with officials in Washington. One of the top officials in the PKK made a statement in late 2006, that "If the US is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well" referring to the alliance between the two groups and their memberships in the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (KCK).