Turkey And Iran To Invade Kurdish Iraq?

According to the rightwing Israeli website DEBKAfile, a new war is about to plunge the Middle East into even greater instability:

DEBKAfileÂ’s exclusive military sources in Iraq and sources in Iran reveal that Turkish and Iranian air units as well as armored, paratroop, special operations and artillery forces are poised for an imminent coordinated invasion of the northern Iraqi autonomous province of Kurdistan.

Our sources pinpoint the target of the combined Iranian-Turkish offensive as the Quandil Mountains (see picture), where some 5,000 Kurdish rebels from Turkey and Iran, members of the PKK and PJAK respectively, are holed up. Iranian and Turkish assault troops are already deployed 7-8 km deep inside Iraqi territory.

Turkey to the northwest and Iran to the east both have Kurdish minorities which have been radicalized by the emergence of Iraqi Kurdistan in the last three years. The three contiguous Kurdish regions form a strategic world hub.

A jittery Washington foresees a Kurdish-Iranian military thrust quickly flaring into a comprehensive conflict and igniting flames that would envelop the whole of Iraqi Kurdistan as well as southern Turkey and Armenia.

Tehran is quite capable of using the opening for its expeditionary force to grab extensive parts of Kurdistan and strike a strategic foothold in northern Iraq.

Informed US officials would not be surprised if Turkey took the chance of seizing northern Iraqi oil fields centered on the oil-rich town of Kirkuk, the source of 40 percent of IraqÂ’s oil output.

The article goes on to suggest that Iran, at least, would see any such military invasion as a spoiler against a possible U.S./Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program. It also links a recent BBC report of Israelis instructing Kurdish Peshmerga terrorists to Israeli intelligence watchposts in Kurdish Iraq, which if true would inflame both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. Both Turkey and Iraq would doubtless claim the same rights of preventative war already exercised by Israel and the US.