The commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Force, Brig. Gen. Mohamad Pakpour, made a very interesting declaration last week. He said the PKK's movements are being closely monitored by Iran's intelligence and army. He added that they would not hesitate to hit PKK militants "if they make a mistake." In particular, Gen. Pakpour was talking about troop movements in northern Iraq, near the Iranian border.Pakpour also pointed out that until 2011, Iranian forces fought against the PKK along the border, not only through cannon fire from Iran, but also by sending troops from time to time to the other side of the border exactly as Turkey did in the past, through cross-border military interventions.At first glance, this declaration may seem to demonstrate that Iran has a quite similar position to Turkey with regard to the PKK. Maybe that's the reason why a number of Iranian officials recently called Turkey to improve relations and deepen cooperation in a number of areas between the two countries. A joint struggle against the PKK may very well offer common ground for rapprochement.It is always better to step back for a while and think about other possibilities, however. We know that the PKK is solely targeting Turkey nowadays. Pakpour himself said that they might hit the PKK if they make a mistake. This is a way of saying that the PKK has not yet committed a mistake from Iran's perspective. In other words, nothing they did in Turkish territory in the last couple of months is considered a mistake by Tehran.Perhaps Iran doesn't think that the PKK's activities in Turkey are mistakes, maybe it even thinks, to the contrary, that the PKK's inaction in Turkey would be a mistake. If this is the case, we have no other choice than to say that Iran considers Turkey as an enemy.Or perhaps, Iran gathered intelligence that the PKK was preparing to hit Iran. If this happens, in other words, if Iran has to deal with the PKK in its own country, that means Tehran will have less energy and time to think about Syria's future. This is exactly what has happened here: Turkey is now much more preoccupied with what is going on in the country than with developments in Syria. Do some people want to push Iran out of the Syrian equation as well?Another possibility may be to provoke the PKK against Iran. If suddenly Iranian officials start evoking the possibility of an operation against the PKK, this can only alarm the organization.But why would Iran want to be targeted by the PKK? Why take the risk? There are two possibilities: Maybe Iran seeks to use the PKK as an excuse to send ground troops into Iraqi Kurdistan, which would only worsen Turkish-Iranian relations or it wants to show Turkey that Tehran considers the PKK as a common enemy. This is a good reason to work together, don't you think?We can't know for sure which of these possibilities will turn out to be true. The point is we can perfectly see how the PKK has become a useful instrument in the hands of those who want to design the region's future. If the PKK or similar organizations were useful instruments, it would be a good idea to look for those who use them. If in this concrete example, the PKK is being used by Iran, the problem is relatively small. The problem will be even more important, if some third player and Iran do (or stop doing) something simultaneously.