US reaches out to Iran’s Kurds, but will they be ‘hung out to dry’ this time?

A day before the US and Israel launched their aerial attack on Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the former shah, posted a message on social media seeking to amend his earlier castigation of an Iranian Kurdish coalition as “separatists” with a “contemptible” agenda.

His effort backfired, unleashing a stream of satirical ripostes that underscored the challenges of leading a country with no history of genuine representative democracy.

The public wrangle kicked off last month after five dissident Iranian Kurdish parties announced the formation of a coalition against the Islamic regime in Tehran. Pahlavi slammed the initiative as a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity, raising alarm bells among Kurds seeking democratic rights denied to them under the Islamic and Pahlavi regimes.

Eager to redress the messaging mishap, Pahlavi then proceeded to post a video featuring him at the centre of a group of mostly unknown men, described as “members of the great family of Iran”, looking on silently as he declared his commitment to ending “all discrimination”.

His attempt was dismissed in many circles of Iran’s fractured opposition, with some social media posts superimposing clown figures on the gathering while others offered cartoons of the Pahlavi “red line” rhetoric.

That was before “Operation Epic Fury” plunged the Middle East into colossal uncertainty as the US scrambles to articulate a day-after plan for Iran.

By Day Four of the war, Iran’s Kurds were receiving an outreach with far more serious implications.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump had a phone call with the head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), the largest of the five parties in the Kurdish coalition, according to news reports. Two days earlier, Trump spoke to Iraqi Kurdish leaders in the semi-autonomous region, where Iranian Kurdish armed groups have peshmerga fighters along the Iran-Iraq border. The CIA was also working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, CNN reported.

Mobilised, armed and with cohesive leadership structures, Iran’s once-overlooked Kurdish minority are in the spotlight as the country’s future hangs in the balance. The Kurds of the Middle East have been wooed by Washington at different times, on different sides of borders that separate them, with different results. Some have been disastrous. The question now for Iran’s Kurds is whether history is set to be repeated or if its lessons will be heeded.

Armed, mobilised, ready to deploy

From their mountainous heartland in Iran’s northwestern border region, the Kurds – who make up between 10 to 17% of the country’s 93 million population – have a long history of resisting Tehran. Their opposition to the current regime dates back to the 1979 revolution, when the predominantly Sunni community launched an armed uprising against the Shiite Islamist regime.

Over the course of nearly half-a-century, Kurdish parties with different acronyms and ideologies, many with armed wings based on the Iraqi side of the border, have managed to withstand Tehran’s efforts to decimate any political opposition.

“The difference between Iranian Kurdistan and rest of the country is the connection between these parties and the people. If you look at the Kurdish region of Iran, the majority of families have lost at least one member in the war against the Islamic regime. So they are already part of this movement,” explained Shukriya Bradost, a Middle East security expert who has studied the history of Iran’s Kurds.

The effectiveness of Kurdish mobilisation was visible during the December-January protests, when the streets of Iran’s cities, towns and villages turned into bloodbaths as the regime unleashed a crackdown on an unprecedented scale.

Watch moreIran, massacre under a blackout

As waves of unorganised demonstrators got mowed down by military grade weapons, seven Kurdish political parties came together to issue a joint call for a general strike on January 8. Other ethnic minority provinces joined the strike call, grinding the economy to a halt and keeping their communities off the streets.

Read more‘Persian cities feel the pain of the Kurdish regions’

The Kurdish mobilisation maintained momentum in the following weeks and months, with party leaders holding coalition talks. By the time Trump’s military “armada” had deployed to the region, five of the seven Kurdish parties that organised the January 8 strike managed to form a coalition with a political platform and agenda.

The Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, launched on February 22, incorporates the largest Kurdish party, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), whose fighters took part in battles in Iraq against the Islamic State (IS) group.

It also includes the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed group that joined the Syrian Kurdish YPG (People’s Defence Units) linked to the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that joined the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fight against the IS group in Syria.

Their history of dealing with the US and negotiating majority communities seeking centralised states have taught the Kurds valuable lessons. But in the Iran theatre today, the challenges are enormous, and with Israel seeking to redraw the map of the Middle East, the outcomes are far from certain.

‘Tactical activation, not a strategic partnership’

Trump’s outreach to the Iranian Kurdish opposition based in Iraqi Kurdistan began on Sunday, a day after the launch of Operation Epic Fury, with a phone call to the leaders of the two main Kurdish factions in Iraq — Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, according to reports. It was followed by a conversation the next day with KDPI chief Mustafa Hijri, CNN reported. 

While the phone calls made headlines, experts were keeping expectations in check. “It looks like a tactical activation, not a strategic partnership,” said Guney Yildiz, senior adviser on geopolitics and strategic insights at the Anthesis-Wallbrook Group.

“The CIA went through everyone else first – MEK [the dissident Mojahedin e-Khalq], monarchists, diaspora groups – and none of them have serious organisational reach inside the country. The Kurds and the Baloch do. So, this is what's left after every other option was eliminated,” he added. "The problem is that tactical activations end when the tactical need ends."

A vast, multi-ethnic country, Iran shares land borders with seven other countries, with minority groups located in the border areas. The majority ethnic Persians, comprising more than 50% of the population, are predominantly based in the central region while the Azeris (around 24%) and Kurds have heartlands in the north. Other minorities include the Lurs (around 17%) and Arabs (2%) in southwestern Iran, including the oil-rich Khuzestan province bordering Iraq. The Baloch (2%) are another important group in the Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Pakistan.

“At least four of them have armed groups – the Kurds, the Baloch, the Arabs and the Lurs. And you're seeing very clearly among these various ethnic minorities, the thinking, if not preparation, for a situation in which Iran further destabilises,” said James Dorsey, adjunct senior fellow at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Crackdown by a weakened regime starts

For Iran’s Kurds, the US-Israeli war against the Islamist regime could be a pivotal moment in their history. “They've been waiting for this moment for four decades. But they also have concerns about the future of the war and what will happen after the death of [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei,” said Bradost.

The most immediate concern is a vicious crackdown in the Kurdish areas if the regime, battered but not beaten, reverts to standard operating procedures. “If the Iranian regime has a retaliation against any part of the country, the Kurdish region will be the first,” Bradost explained.

That scenario was already unfolding within the first week of the war.  On Thursday, the Iranian military said it targeted headquarters of Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan following strikes on Kurdish regions in both Iran and Iraq, according to Iranian state media. 

It could all go horribly wrong for the Kurds, which is why their leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan have pushed the Trump administration for guarantees, explained Dorsey. “Iranian Kurds said, among other things, we want you to have boots on the ground. But even more importantly, we want a no-fly zone. We want to see commitment, because there's been enough Kurdish experience with the US and Israeli support that ended with the Kurds being hung out to dry,” he said.

The ​Iranian intelligence ministry, in its statement on regime operations in the Kurdish areas on Thursday, said Iranian forces were cooperating with "noble Kurds" to thwart the "Israeli-American" ⁠plan to attack Iranian soil and fracture the nation.

The statement underscores the attempts, from inside and outside Iran, to fracture communities and a populace that has repeatedly risen up to demand basic rights and liberties within a representative democratic framework.   

The ‘arithmetic’ of tactical ties

As the US-Israeli military operation grinds on without a day-after plan for Iran, the country faces the risk of fracturing along ethnic fault lines, experts note.

“As a matter of principle, any outcome in Iran – whether that is the fragmentation of Iran as a nation state, whether that is the toppling of the regime, or change from within the regime – that produces a government that's less threatening, as far as Israel is concerned, is a victory,” said Dorsey. “As a matter of principle, Israel encourages fragmentation, but that's not the only outcome that they would find acceptable. And the same is true for elements in the United States.”

The Kurds, in their long struggle against majoritarianism, have realised the dangers of demanding an independent state. Across the border in Turkey, the PKK has abandoned its separatist goals and is focused instead on more autonomy and greater Kurdish rights. Considered a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and several European capitals, the PKK today is engaged in a long drawn-out peace process with Turkish authorities.

But that didn’t stop Turkey from backing the Syrian government’s recent military campaign to push out Kurdish SDF forces from northern Syria. Trump’s special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, even declared the SDF’s purpose had "largely expired", crushing Syrian Kurdish hopes of establishing a semi-autonomous zone, which the US helped establish in Iraq.  

The Syrian experience hangs over the calculations of Iranian Kurdish groups today, making them more “hard-nosed”, according to Yildiz.  “They understand why America made the choices it made in Syria, even if they disagree. They're not operating on hope. They're looking at a regime that's been decapitated three times in nine months and deciding they can't afford to sit this out. Their options are: work with an unreliable partner, or watch the most consequential moment in their political lifetime pass without acting. That's not trust — that's arithmetic,” he said.

The key variable in coming weeks and months, he noted, is whether the Iranian security apparatus holds together or fractures. The US outreach to the Kurds could end "when the tactical need ends. If this shifts to a diplomatic track or the regime stabilises, Kurdish utility to Washington drops fast”.

In which case, the Kurds of Iran will once again embrace the age-old adage that the Kurds have no friends but the mountains. As Israel increases its influence across the region, unchecked this time by the White House, Iran’s Kurds are likely to add new lessons on frenemies, in keeping with the times.