Straight after his sentence, he fled to Kuwait, and remained there for just under a year. He then went to Iran, upon the start of the Iran-Iraq war, and carried on with the IAO, which was fully functional and operational in Iran. The IAO was also working with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and so the IRGC were impressed with Nasrallah's capabilities, and decided to train him and send him out for combat missions abroad. He carried out numerous missions in Kurdistan in 1981. He fought alongside the Peshmerga in the Kurdish mountains until 1987, and then became the manager of the IOA's office in Kurdistan and settled there for ten years.