{"id":11451,"date":"2026-03-11T04:54:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T04:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/natharatmouchrika.net\/home\/?p=11451"},"modified":"2026-03-11T04:54:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T04:54:34","slug":"arming-the-kurds-to-fight-iran-is-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/natharatmouchrika.net\/home\/?p=11451","title":{"rendered":"Arming the Kurds to Fight Iran Is Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It will achieve nothing but instability and carnage.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration may have planned a rapid fall of the Iranian regime after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a quick victory that would force Iran to agree to its terms. They may have planned for a precision victory that would be quick and not spread across the region, like the mission in Venezuela. But it seems not to have happened. Iran is losing the war, but the regime has not collapsed, the people have not risen up, Tehran is not yielding to U.S. demands, and there is a great danger of the war spreading and destabilizing, not only the region, but beyond.<\/p>\n

Washington faces the possibility of leaving a devastated Iran with its regime still in place to rebuild its civilian nuclear program, its missile program, and its ties with its regional proxies, potentially leading to another war in a few years. Searching for a plan B among a whirlwind of changing justifications and goals for the war, the Trump administration is considering one that would risk a war that would last longer and spread wider.<\/p>\n

There are multiple reports that the U.S. is considering arming Iranian Kurdish opposition forces in Iraq in support of an invasion into Iran. The Kurds make up a large ethnic minority in both Iran and Iraq. Their ancestral land covers parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. There are\u00a0thousands of Kurdish soldiers<\/a>\u00a0inside Iraq along the Iraq\u2013Iran border, primarily in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0been \u201cin active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support.\u201d On March 1, President Donald Trump\u00a0spoke with Kurdish leaders<\/a>\u00a0in Iraq and\u00a0asked them<\/a>\u00a0\u201cto enable Iranian Kurdish fighters based in Iraq to move into Iran.\u201d One Kurdish party he spoke to\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0\u201cTrump was clear in his call. He told us the Kurds must choose a side in this battle\u2014either with America and Israel or with Iran.\u201d Though the call\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0went well, the Kurdish leaders \u201cexpressed reservations about getting involved in any ground invasion into Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cterrorist movements\u201d at the border with Iraq, and hundreds of Kurdish fighters have\u00a0crossed from Iraq into Iran<\/a>\u00a0in preparation for a possible attack. Part of the bombing of Iran has focused on targets in western Iran and Kurdistan Province. Kurdish leaders say the bombing is meant to facilitate an infiltration from Iraq. The strikes have hit Revolutionary Guard facilities, police stations, and border guard posts.\u00a0According to video analysis<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, \u201cthe strikes have been concentrated on locations near highways that run from the Iraq-Iran border into Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIA began work to arm Kurdish forces\u00a0several months before the war<\/a>. They\u00a0have provided<\/a>\u00a0\u201csmall arms to the Iranian Kurdish forces as part of a covert program to destabilize Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strategy is meant to provide a menu of outcomes. Kurdish forces could be used to increase pressure on regime change or to encourage an uprising in Iran. According to one U.S. official, the goal would be to \u201ctake over a specific territory in the Kurdish region inside Iran in order to challenge the regime and inspire a broader uprising.\u201d An incursion from Iraq could also force Iranian forces to respond, drawing them out into the open where\u00a0they could become targets<\/a>\u00a0for fighter jets. Others suggest that the idea would be for Kurdish armed forces\u00a0to occupy Iran\u2019s security forces<\/a>, helping Iranians to take to the streets without getting massacred. An invasion from Iraq and a Kurdish uprising could also create instability and a security crisis.<\/p>\n

The status of the plan remains unclear. The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that American officials are still \u201cdebating the utility of a Kurdish invasion\u201d and that \u201cthe White House had not yet decided whether to send the Kurds into Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt\u00a0denies it<\/a>, insisting that, though \u201cTrump has spoken with Kurdish leaders,\u201d he \u201chas not agreed to any plan to arm them to overthrow the Iranian government.\u201d<\/p>\n

A senior Iranian Kurdish official\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0CNN that \u201cIranian Kurdish opposition forces are expected to take part in a ground operation in Western Iran, in the coming days.\u201d\u00a0Axios\u00a0<\/em>reports<\/a>\u00a0that Kurdish, American, and Israeli officials told them that \u201cseveral Kurdish Iranian factions are preparing for a possible ground offensive against Iran’s regime in the northwestern part of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Government officials in Iraq tell a different story. Kurdish regional government officials deny involvement in plans to send armed fighters into Iran. Nechirvan Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0it \u201cmust not become part of any conflict or military escalation that harms the lives and security of our fellow citizens.\u201d According to Iraq\u2019s\u00a0national security adviser<\/a>, Qasim al-Araji, Iraq will not permit Kurdish groups \u201cto infiltrate or cross the Iranian border to carry out terrorist acts from Iraqi territory\u201d and says that the \u201cKurdistan Region\u2019s Interior Ministry has sent Peshmerga security reinforcements to the border strip with Iran\u201d to prevent it. Iraq\u2019s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has also\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe Iraqi government will under no circumstances allow any threat to be directed at Iran from Iraqi territory.\u201d The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that officials in Iraqi Kurdistan \u201cseem to have complied\u201d with an Iraqi government order \u201cnot to allow Iranian Kurdish militants to cross the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the Kurdish leaders who spoke to Trump, Bafel Talabani, also received a call from Araghchi. On that call, Talabani \u201cemphasized<\/a>\u00a0the importance of finding peaceful solutions to the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the plan proceeds, the result could be catastrophic. A ground invasion from Iraq could prolong the war and increase the number of deaths. It could also make the war harder to contain and spread it to other regions. It could potentially draw in, not only Iraq, but Syria and Turkey. Turkey could also be problematic because, as Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and Program Director for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco told\u00a0The American Conservative<\/em>, since Turkey and Iran work together \u201cin their suppression of Kurdish fighters in their two countries, the U.S. would essentially be undermining a NATO ally.\u201d So the plan could create division and strife in NATO.<\/p>\n

Since the Persian majority in Iran \u201cwould not welcome a Kurdish incursion,\u201d the strategy could lead to ethnic strife and civil war in which different ethnic and other groups are pitted against each other in a fragmented and weakened Iran. Granted, this may well be part of the American intention. Zunes says that supporting the Kurds may be one way of America achieving its goal of turning Iran into a failed state.<\/p>\n

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