"We have the right to launch attacks against Iranian forces," said Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, the de facto leader of the feared Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a quazi-socialist rebel movement entrenched in a decades-long guerilla war for independence in the majority Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

He said recent Iranian artillery shelling on PKK camps in Iraqi Kurdistan meant that the rebel group's battle could spread to Iran.

"We are on the defense. If we're not attacked we won't either. We believe politics and democracy are a better path," Bayik said as his personal guard of a handful of male and female fighters in Kurdish dress waited outside a small hut while he spoke to AFP.

But Bayik said PKK "intelligence reports" suggested Iran was preparing for a new shelling of rebel positions.

"We can't afford to face them in open battle. We'll make hit-and-run raids with our Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and mortars."

The PKK consists of thousands of male and female Kurdish fighters who profess a "Democratic Socialist" philosophy, under which women's equality plays an important role and in whose fighting ranks sexual relations are not allowed.

To join, members have to renounce worldly possessions and cut links with the outside world in their quest for Kurdish independence and a new social order in which women will no longer be "enslaved," Bayik said.

Bayik blamed the offensive by Iran on the Islamic republic's desire to please neighbor and NATO member Turkey as Western pressure mounts over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"They will do anything to make sure Turkey is not with the US in a fight against Iran," said Bayik, who commands the rebels in Iraq and Turkey while PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan serves a life sentence in a Turkish prison.

On Sunday, Baghdad accused Iranian forces of entering five kilometers (three miles) into Iraq and shelling PKK positions. Tehran has neither confirmed nor denied the attacks.

Turkey applauded the attacks against the PKK camps, which lace a series of steep winding valleys in a region close to both Turkey and Iran where the adjoining territories are all majority Kurdish.

An estimated 25 to 35 million Kurds live in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Ankara has long urged Iraqi and US forces to root out the PKK from Iraq's northern region, which they have occupied since the 1980s war between Iran and Iraq.

Turkey says some 5,000 armed PKK militants have found refuge in northern Iraq since 1999.

Bayik said the figure was lower but would not provide a specific number, saying it was a "military secret."

Iran "will not dare send in troops against us unless the situation in Iraq deteriorates further," Bayik said. "However, they will continue with the bombings."

He said the Iranian attacks were also aimed to pressure Baghdad as it struggles to form a government.

Kurdish leaders in Iraq have promised to raise the issue of the northern oil city of Kirkuk which they demand be integrated into a Kurdish autonomous zone after a cabinet is formed.

Iran is "trying to help some factions in Iraq work against the Kurdish nation so that Kirkuk doesn't join the (autonomous zone). This is happening as the new government is being created and the Kirkuk problem is discussed," Bayik said.

"If the Kurds go to war with the Arabs over Kirkuk we will help them. We don't just fight for ourselves," Bayik said adding that such a conflict was "possible."

But on Friday Iraqi Kurdistan's Sulaimaniyah province administrator, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), warned the PKK against using Iraqi territory to attack Iran or Turkey.

"They should think of all of Kurdistan," Bayik responded.

"We are not against the PUK having good ties with the Turkish and Iranian governments but these relationships should not go against the Kurdish nation."

Turkey maintains it reserves the right to venture into Iraq to pursue PKK fighters based there, but has denied reports that such operations are already under way.

It has amassed thousands of troops along the border with Iraq for what officials describe as a large-scale effort to prevent infiltrations by PKK rebels based in northern Iraq.

The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has been fighting Ankara since 1984 for Kurdish self-rule.