Sunday's IRNA report quoted IRGC chief General Mohammed Pakpour as saying that the raids had targeted the separatist Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) group, the social democratic Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the left-wing Komalah Party.

Gen Pakpour said that the IRGC had inflicted a "massive blow" on "terrorists and counter-revolutionary groups."

He said that "none of the IRGC combatants were hurt in the operation," without providing further details or divulging when the raids had taken place.

The commander vowed a further "crackdown on any instigators of insecurity directed by foreign or internal counter-revolutionaries."

Tehran asserts that Washington and Israel fund PJAK, which is allegedly an offshoot of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party, to destabilise the region.

Reports by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published by the Washington Post in 2006 suggested that US troops in Iraq had established links with PJAK and that the group "has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran."

Tehran claims to have killed scores of PJAK fighters in recent years.

The KDP, which helped found the Soviet-backed but short-lived Kurdish Mahabad republic in 1946, demands "Kurdish national rights" within a "democratic federal republic of Iran."