As with everything in this war, what seems certain one day may not be the next. This reflects the fickleness of the person in command, U.S. President Donald Trump, and the lack of planning in his offensive against Iran. The Kurds are no exception: the option of using these militias to open a front on the ground, a plan that was leaked — likely intentionally — to several U.S. media outlets, has been shelved, as the Republican confirmed this week. Nevertheless, the Iranian Kurdish groups claim to be prepared to intervene against the Islamic Republic the moment the regime weakens.
Today, the memory of the Republic of Mahabad has resurfaced strongly, both as inspiration and a warning. Established in northwestern Iran in 1946, with its capital in Mahabad, it was one of several attempts to create an independent state for the Kurds — considered one of the world’s largest stateless peoples — but, like the others, it failed spectacularly: it lasted just 10 months, when the Soviet troops that had been protecting it withdrew. “Whenever the central government in Tehran is weak, centrifugal forces emerge among ethnic and religious minorities in the outlying regions, often with external support. This happened after World War I and World War II and after the 1979 Revolution,” argues Iranian political scientist Ali Alfoneh of the Arab Gulf States Institute.
The legacy of Mahabad, however, lives on among Kurdish nationalism: two grandsons of one of its military leaders, Mustafa Barzani, hold the positions of prime minister and president of Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region established with U.S. support as a reward for its role in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. It is also present in the continuity of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), which led the Republic of Mahabad and is now one of the six factions that make up the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, created just days before the start of the Israeli-American bombing of the Islamic Republic.
“The repression of Kurds in modern Iran has been very significant, particularly since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Kurdish activists face disproportionate arrests and longer sentences, as well as secret executions,” explains Dlawar Aladdin, director of the Middle East Research Institute, based in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The repression has intensified since the protests sparked by the death in custody of the young Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in 2022, when the Kurdish slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” spread throughout the country.
Marginalization of the Kurds
Between nine and 10 million Kurds live in Iran, representing about 10% of the total population. They are concentrated in the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam, and West Azerbaijan, although Alfoneh explains that, except in small villages, the towns in this area are usually mixed, with populations from other minorities and ethnic groups such as Azeris and Lurs. One of the signs of the Iranian regime’s low acceptance among Iran’s Kurds, the expert points out, is “the extremely low voter turnout,” although it tends to increase when there are “reformist candidates who express sympathy for minorities.”
The economic marginalization suffered by the region, like other peripheral areas of Iran, is compounded by a heavy military presence — to monitor the mountainous border with Iraq and the movements of Kurdish armed groups — which is currently the target of Israeli and American airstrikes. “Compared to other states like Turkey, Iran has more cultural and linguistic tolerance toward the Kurds. However, there are fewer opportunities for political participation [in Turkey, the pro-Kurdish party is the third largest in parliament],” Aladdin adds. All the parties that make up the current Coalition of Iranian Kurdistan are considered “terrorist” and “separatist” by Tehran — their leaders and militants live in exile — and, given that candidates in elections need the approval of the Guardian Council, it is not feasible for Kurdish nationalism to gain representation.
“In Iran, a Kurdish member of parliament has to be loyal to the regime. In contrast, in Turkey, the voices of Kurdish members of parliament are heard internationally. In Iran, only the mountains listen to us,” says Kayuan Faramarzi, representative in Europe of Komala, another of the Coalition parties. His party proposes a “secular and democratic” Iran with a “decentralized or federal” structure that allows regional minorities to govern themselves.
But this has not gone down well with the Iranian opposition, whose only common ground with the regime is Persian nationalism. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah deposed in 1979 and one of the leading opposition figures in exile, attacked the Kurdish parties, accusing them of being “separatists.”
“We’re very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is,” Trump said recently, after last week he went so far as to threaten the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan to allow Iranian groups to use their territory in a possible offensive against Tehran.
“I think the Trump administration has realized that playing the Kurdish card would be counterproductive, as it would alienate both Turkey and Iran, neither of which wants to see a Kurdish separatist entity controlling territory within Iran,” says Ali Vaez, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and several ministers have warned that they are closely monitoring “separatist scenarios” that are attempting to “create ethnic conflicts” in the neighboring country and which they believe are orchestrated by Israel. The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government is also opposed to the use of its territory after seeing it become a battleground: in the first two weeks of conflict, Iran and its allied militias in Iraq launched more than 300 projectiles against American, French and Italian targets in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as against headquarters and training camps of Kurdish-Iranian groups, injuring at least 40 people and killing seven: a security employee at Erbil Airport, a French soldier, and five militiamen.
“We are not going to send our forces to the slaughter”
The other reason is that, beyond the CIA’s delivery of light weapons to some groups in recent months, “there was no tangible plan,” explains Ziryan Rojhelati, director of the Rudaw Research Center in Erbil, who estimates the number of armed militants in these Kurdish-Iranian groups at fewer than 5,000. Certainly a very small number to confront a force of more than 600,000 troops from the regular Iranian army and the Revolutionary Guard. “These groups want to know what the U.S. and Israel’s plans are for the near future. If the idea is simply to eliminate the missile launch capability and the nuclear program, that will leave a regime that will still be very capable of suppressing Kurdish opposition movements on the ground,” he states. “The Kurds alone would not be able to change the regime. So they will only intervene if they see cracks in the regime or insurgent groups operating in several places.”
“We are not going to send our forces to the slaughter,” Abdullah Mohtadi, the leader of Komala, recently stated. Faramarzi, from the same party, explains that the current strategy is to wait for the bombings — which are targeting border areas — to weaken the regime enough that it will not put up a fight: “When the government is weak, the people of Kurdistan will step forward, and Komala with them. But it would be good to receive more support from allied forces.” Members of other parties in the Kurdish-Iranian Coalition have confirmed in interviews with other media outlets that this is the prevailing position: to wait for Iran to weaken before intervening.
After decades of repression and exile, the Kurds of Iran are clinging to a lifeline, even if it means facing Israeli and U.S. bombing. This is despite the expectation that they will be used like a disposable tissue, tossed in the trash when no longer needed. A recent analysis by the Kurdish Institute in Washington summed it up well, citing several examples, from Mahabad in 1946 to the recent abandonment of the Kurdish militias in Syria in the face of the central government’s advance: “The Kurds are mobilized in times of crisis, praised in times of need, and abandoned when stability is negotiated without their participation.”
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