Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it’s moving to “nip in the bud” separatist and opposition groups it accuses of trying to infiltrate the country’s northwest, casting recent military operations there as a pre-emptive strike against US-backed unrest, Al Jazeera reports.

IRGC spokesperson Brigadier-General Hossein Mohebbi said Tehran is alert to what he called an “enemy plan” to reorganise anti-government factions, including the exiled Mojahden-e-Khalq, to reignite deadly protests that swept Iran in December and January.

“What we are doing in the northwest is to nip them in the bud before they enter,” Mohebbi told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

He said the IRGC’s focus on the Strait of Hormuz, where it has been locked in a confrontation with the United States, had not left it blind to other threats.