US seeks Kurdish boots on ground in Iran. It’s not an easy ask.
President Donald Trump said this week that the air war currently being waged against Iran by the United States and Israel could eventually include a ground war.
Still, Mr. Trump faces considerable domestic political pressure against American troops on the ground, and his phone calls this week to Kurdish leaders in Iraq and Iran, urging them to play their roles in the war, have led to speculation that Kurdish armed forces could fill that role.
But any willingness of stateless Kurds to join the fight for regime change – and Iranian Kurds have been eagerly awaiting this day – would be weighed against the risk of once again being used and then abandoned by the United States, various sources say.
Why we wrote this
Once again, a crisis in the Middle East prompts the United States to call on military aid from stateless Kurds, this time as proxies on the ground in Iran. The memory of disappointments after vital roles played in Iraq and Syria affects any desire to contribute.
Indeed, for the leaders of the Kurdish minorities in Iran and Iraq who received Mr. Trump’s calls, there was first the rush to hear from the president of the United States.
Add to that the thrill of a presidential summons to “rise up” against the Iranian Kurds’ archenemy in Tehran, the leaders of the Islamic Republic, who have been gravely weakened by the US-Israeli war.
But then, the fall. Initial enthusiasm was tempered, according to Kurdish sources and other experts, by memories of a long history of “use ’em and leave ’em” treatment from Washington.
“This puts the Kurds in a serious dilemma,” says Yerevan Saeed, a scholar-in-residence at the School of International Service at American University in Washington. “Of course, there is initially enthusiasm about being called by the president,” he adds, “but there is also distrust and the memory of betrayal by the United States in very similar circumstances.”
The legacy of Iraq and Syria
The Kurds have not forgotten President George HW Bush’s call for Iraqi Kurds to rise up against a villainous and weakened Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. Nor the American silence that followed when Saddam unleashed his murderous forces against rebellious Kurdish communities, who had already been victims of Iraq’s famous Anfal campaign in the late 1980s.
Additionally, the situation is still fresh after hearing the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, Tom Barrack, declare in January that the usefulness of a more than decade-old U.S.-Kurdish pact to combat a resurgent Islamic State group in Syria had “expired.” The United States’ interest now, Mr. Barrack said, was to see the new central government in Damascus consolidate its power over the entire country — and over independent militias.
Groups such as Washington’s former partners, the Syrian Kurds.
“Too often, the Kurds are only remembered when their strength or sacrifice is needed,” Iraqi First Lady Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed said in a statement Thursday. “Leave the Kurds alone. We are not weapons for hire.”
However, before the Kurds do anything that puts them at increased risk of attack from Tehran, “they would want to have firm guarantees of support from Washington,” Dr. Saeed says. “But even such commitments would not dispel doubts based on past experience about trust in the United States.”
Mr. Trump reportedly offered, among other incentives, air support during his phone calls with Kurdish leaders. On Sunday, he contacted Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and Bafel Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, leaders of the two main political parties governing Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. On Tuesday, the president called Mustafa Hijri, head of the Iraq-based Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), one of six anti-regime Kurdish political parties.
The six groups recently formed a coalition to take joint military action, although representatives say no decisions have been made. They say serious signs of U.S. air cover should come first. Iran has previously made serious threats against Kurdish groups and launched missile attacks against their Iraqi headquarters on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the PDKI issued a statement calling on all Iranian soldiers and military personnel, “especially in Kurdistan,” to abandon their bases and sever all ties with “the armed and repressive forces of the regime.” This statement echoes Mr. Trump’s promise of immunity, declared in the early hours of the war, to all elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other security forces turning against the regime.
40 million Kurds, no state
Globally, the Kurds number around 40 million people, spread from Turkey and Syria to Iran, and are considered the world’s largest ethnic group without its own state. The closest point is the group’s semi-autonomous region in Iraq.
Ismaël Adnan/SOPA/Reuters
Iranian Kurds, concentrated in the Kurdistan region in northwest Iran, represent around 10% of the country’s 90 million inhabitants.
Why Washington would turn to the Kurds in its war against the Islamic Republic is no mystery. Iranian Kurdish militias based on the country’s northern border have for decades been ready to return to Iran to fight the hated central government when the time is right.
Recent reports claim that the CIA, which maintains relationships with various Kurdish armed forces across the Middle East, has increased its arms deliveries to Iranian Kurdish forces.
As President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week opened the door to a possible ground campaign in the war, some experts speculate that Iranian Kurdish forces could step in to play a role.
“The Iranian Kurds really want to come home to overthrow the regime, and the administration understands that and views working with and through their ground forces as a way to avoid the need for U.S. forces on the ground,” said David Schenker, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
“But for the Kurds, it is a very risky business,” he adds. “They might benefit from some level of operational support, but overall these people will be left to their own devices. »
Another obstacle is the lack of clarity on the mission asked of them, explains Dr Saeed, himself an Iraqi Kurd. Is the United States offering a role in a struggle whose ultimate goal is regime change, he and others wonder, or is it envisioning the Kurds creating a diversion in northern Iran, thereby forcing the IRGC to respond and reduce its forces and potentially weaken its hold on other parts of the country?
“One concern would be whether the Kurds could hope to gain long-term benefits and advance their own goals by joining the war,” he said, “or whether they would only be a temporary tool that would become useless when other U.S. goals were achieved.” »
Advantages and Disadvantages of an Ethnic Role
The United States should consider its own concerns before supporting Iranian Kurds or any other Iranian ethnic minority group, others point out.
“The risk for the United States is that a regime collapse aided by armed opposition groups could very quickly degenerate into chaos,” says Mr. Schenker, now director of Arab policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This could potentially fuel a number of post-regime problems, including a division of the state along ethnic lines. »
Others have offered more optimistic perspectives on how Iranian ethnic groups, including Kurds, might be encouraged to translate their experiences as minorities navigating a harsh religious autocracy to promote a post-regime multi-ethnic democracy.
They note that, in addition to Iranian students, it is sometimes the country’s minorities who have sparked significant anti-regime movements. One example is how the 2022 arrest and killing of a young Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, over her refusal to wear mandatory head coverings in public, sparked a wave of women-led protests across the country.
It remains to be seen how much the Kurds’ long and complex relationship with the United States influences their role in the Iran war, but ultimately the positive side of U.S.-Kurdish relations will likely outweigh the disappointments, Dr. Saeed says.
“The bitter experiences will not be forgotten, but overall it remains a victory for the Kurds considering what they have gained through their alliance with the United States,” he said. He cites the example of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which emerged under the protective umbrella of a U.S. no-fly zone imposed during the final years of Saddam’s regime.
Yet, he says, “it all depends on what [former Kurdistan Region President Masoud] Barzani said: “We really don’t have anyone to rely on. We must only rely on ourselves.
