A legal analysis published 2 October by an Iranian scholar writing under the pseudonym Arez Rizgari concludes that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' 17 July 2026 missile strike on the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan's headquarters in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq violated international humanitarian law, because the at least ten Peshmerga killed lacked Continuous Combat Function (CCF) and were therefore entitled to the presumption of civilian status.

The strike hit the reception area of Komala's headquarters during a confrontation between Iran and Rojhilat parties that intensified after the conflict between Iran and the US-Israeli coalition began on 28 February 2026. Komala's statement described the dead as "Peshmerga recruits who were preparing to join the ranks of Peshmerga forces." Independent reporting broadly corroborates this account: Hengaw reported that a significant portion of those killed were volunteers still undergoing the party's admission process, and Hana reported that several had recently been recruited, with no verified evidence of continuous combat function or direct participation in hostilities.

The Doctrine

The analysis rests on the concept of Continuous Combat Function, introduced in the ICRC's 2009 Interpretive Guidance on direct participation in hostilities. Under that framework, members of non-state organised armed groups become military objectives in non-international armed conflicts only if they hold a continuous combat function — lasting integration into the group's armed forces involving the preparation, execution or command of hostile acts. Mere recruitment or organisational affiliation does not suffice. Where doubt exists as to an individual's status, the presumption of civilian status under Article 50(1) of Additional Protocol I, applicable as a customary rule, governs — and the Guidance extends that presumption to doubt about membership itself.

The author classifies the Iran-Kurdish parties conflict as a cross-border NIAC meeting the ICTY's Tadić thresholds (para. 562) of organisation and intensity, the latter satisfied by the sustained pattern of Iranian drone and missile strikes on party headquarters, training facilities and residential encampments between 2017/2018 and 2026, resulting in dozens of confirmed fatalities.

Why the Recruits Were Civilian

Applying the Guidance's own criteria (pp. 33–35), the analysis finds no evidentiary basis for CCF. The pre-first-act pathway to CCF requires recruitment, training and equipping — all three conjunctively — for continuous participation in hostilities. Available records indicate at most recruitment. No source reports the individuals bearing arms, wearing insignia, or committing hostile acts. Nor does the admission process itself qualify as direct participation: under the Guidance (p. 53), recruitment and training cause harm only indirectly unless tied to a predetermined hostile act, and no such act has been reported.

At the level of state responsibility, the author notes that the analysis operates differently from criminal law. Under ARSIWA (Arts. 2 and 4) and the ICJ's confirmation in DRC v. Uganda (paras. 213–214), attributing wrongful acts to a state requires no proof of fault or mens rea. Informational ambiguity does not preclude responsibility: under the principle of precautions in attack (PI, Art. 57; CIHL, Rules 15–21), an information deficiency can itself constitute a failure of due diligence. The demonstrated inability or unwillingness to distinguish individuals lacking CCF from legitimate military objectives raises, on the public record, a strong presumption of an indiscriminate attack in conflict with the principles of distinction and precaution.

Reinforcing Patterns

The piece documents three recurring patterns in IRGC strikes. First, individual targeting without functional differentiation: the 8 September 2018 missile strike on PDKI positions in Koya killed 11 to 16 people, including six leadership members gathered at a plenum. The IRGC confirmed targeting "the headquarters and a meeting of leaders of a criminal grouplet and a center for training affiliated terrorists"; the author argues that political leaders' presence in the mixed-use complex did not establish CCF, and at best only the training section was a legitimate objective.

Second, strikes on locations with no established military element. Human Rights Watch recorded in an October 2022 report that some targets lay in towns and villages where the parties had no military activity, and documented 2010 artillery strikes on villages connected to PJAK with no confirmed military presence.

Third, strikes on mixed-use camps housing families and refugees, including drone strikes on the Girdechal and Sourdash camps in May 2026. The mere presence of armed personnel in one part of a camp does not convert the whole camp into a military objective under Article 52(2) of Protocol I; attacking the entire complex violates distinction in the first instance, not merely proportionality.

The Enforcement Gap

The analysis's central structural claim is that even a clear CCF violation would be largely unenforceable. International courts have not applied CCF as a determinative criterion for targetability, because the construct lacks explicit treaty grounding and the consistent state practice needed to crystallise as customary international law. State approaches diverge: Germany accepted CCF in the Mir Ali case, the US rejected comparable reasoning in Al-Bihani, and Israel shifted from a geographically qualified membership approach in 2010 to an explicit "membership per se" standard in 2014.

Human rights courts largely bypass CCF, evaluating targeting operations under the stricter "absolute necessity" standard of human rights law, per Peretko's scholarship. The ICJ, confined to consent-based inter-state disputes under Articles 34(1) and 36(2) of its Statute, has never engaged the issue, and armed groups have no standing before it.

Enforcement mechanisms fail on four layers, the author argues. The ICJ is unlikely to engage; the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission under Article 90 of Protocol I requires ad hoc consent that states persistently withhold. Special agreements under Common Article 3 are rarely concluded, with states at times dismissing proposals as "interference" — a pattern Sivakumaran has documented. ICC prosecution of state officials remains foreclosed by Security Council vetoes, non-accession and dependence on state cooperation. And reciprocity, which drives self-application of IHL in symmetric conflicts, is undermined in asymmetric ones.

Where states have departed from CCF, the departure has moved in one direction only — toward more permissive standards rather than more protective ones — suggesting expanded targeting authority rather than principled disagreement, the author writes.

Practical Consequence

For practitioners, the analysis clarifies that recruitment-stage members of organised armed groups retain civilian protection under the dominant interpretive framework, and that the burden of establishing CCF rests on the attacking state. But it also documents that no current international mechanism can convert such a finding into enforced accountability. The author's prescription is deliberately modest: non-consent-based international investigations as the minimum available step, serving as documentation that may later feed any accountability mechanism that eventually emerges.