Arming a Kurdish insurgency would be a risky endeavor – for both the US and Iran’s minority Kurds

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John Calabrese, American University

(THE CONVERSATION) With the Iranian regime weakened by relentless American and Israeli missiles, Washington is eyeing a familiar U.S. ally in the Middle East to help push the Islamic Republic over the edge: the Kurds.

Making up between 8% to 17% of the country’s total population, Iran’s Kurdish minority has long been persecuted under the Islamic Republic.

And since the war in Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, reports have circulated suggesting that the CIA is actively working to arm Kurdish opposition forces with the aim of encouraging a popular uprising inside Iran.

Trump administration officials have held discussions with Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq and northwestern Iran, testing the possibility of using opposition forces to help topple whatever remains of the regime. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump personally called two of Iraqi Kurdistan’s top leaders – Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani – the day after the bombing campaign began.

All this comes amid reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been lobbying for a U.S.-Kurdish cooperation for months, and that Israel has long-established intelligence networks among Kurdish groups in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

The appeal of this approach, in this moment, is obvious: The Kurds have long-standing grievances against Iran’s clerical leaders, having suffered at their hands for 47 years. Many Kurds would welcome the Islamic Republic’s ouster. But as a close observer on Middle East dynamics, I believe that pursuing such an approach would be deeply reckless.

The logic and its appeal

The Kurds – roughly 30 million to 40 million people across Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran – are the world’s largest stateless ethnic group. Promised a state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, that prospect vanished with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Although united by shared heritage and related languages, Kurdish communities have developed distinct political cultures and leaderships, making them less a single movement than a collection of related groups.

Iran’s Kurdish minority, concentrated in the northwest, has long been at the forefront of opposition to the Islamic Republic.

Since the republic’s founding in 1979, Iran’s Kurds have faced persistent repression. The regime swiftly crushed an early Kurdish autonomy movement, executing its leaders and attacking Kurdish towns. In the decades since, Kurdish parties have been banned, cultural expression restricted, and activists publicly executed.

Kurdish towns were among the most fervent sites of protests in 2022 following the death in custody of a Kurdish-Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini. PJAK — the Kurdistan Free Life Party ideologically affiliated with the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — has conducted intermittent armed campaigns against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for two decades.

In the current conflict, the Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s primary armed service, has already begun striking Kurdish positions, hitting them with dozens of drones. The strikes reflect Tehran’s long-standing posture: Any external pressure on the regime is treated as an opportunity for Kurdish groups to advance their own political aims, resulting in moves to neutralize that threat preemptively.

Several Kurdish groups have released public statements hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect.

All of which has seemingly convinced war strategists in Washington that from a purely tactical standpoint, the calculus is favorable: low American footprint and maximum disruption per dollar spent.

This is, of course, exactly the logic that drove the CIA’s support for the Mujahideen Mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the arming of Syrian rebel factions – both of which produced consequences their architects failed to foresee.

Weaponizing the Kurdish question

One of the fundamental considerations is the ethics of such a move. Using Kurdish political aspirations as a battering ram against Tehran – without any genuine commitment to Kurdish statehood or autonomy – would, in my opinion, constitute a betrayal.

And the Kurds have a long and painful history when it comes to betrayal. The United States abandoned the Iraqi Kurds after the 1975 Algiers Accord between the Shah of Iran and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with almost no warning. The accord ended Iranian support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels, whom the U.S. and Israel had been covertly backing to weaken Baghdad. When Tehran and Baghdad reached their deal, support was cut off overnight. Barzani’s movement collapsed within weeks, and Iraqi forces launched reprisals that displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians.

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s famous remark – that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work” – captured Washington’s approach perfectly.

The Kurds remember this betrayal. One senior Kurdistan Regional Government official recently told CNN: “There is no doubt that the Kurdish people overwhelmingly oppose the regime of the Islamic Republic. Yet they also fear being abandoned once again.”

Pushback from allies?

The quandary that Washington faces is that any half-measures to support the Kurds would render the community in Iran vulnerable to renewed repression should the regime survive – as many observers expect. Yet stronger backing would likely face resistance from key U.S. allies in the region.

Serious arming of the Kurds in the region would inflame Turkey, in particular. Ankara considers the PKK and its affiliates — including PJAK — existential terrorist threats and has carried out repeated cross-border military operations in Iraq and Syria to suppress them. Arming PJAK would place Washington in the position of simultaneously asking Turkey, a NATO ally, to accept a strengthened PKK-linked movement on its southeastern flank.

And these tensions come at a delicate moment. After decades of insurgency, Turkey and the PKK made significant moves toward a ceasefire in 2025. Ankara would see any U.S. support for PKK-linked groups as undermining those efforts. Washington faced a similar dilemma in Syria, arming the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) against Islamic State group fighters while reassuring Turkey it was temporary – a strategy that left lasting mistrust.

A repeat in Iran could push Turkey’s patience beyond its limits.

The Kurds are not the only ethnic minority preparing for confrontation. Militant groups represneting the ethnic minority Baluchs have formed their own coalition. While there is no indication of U.S. support, a Baluch insurgency would further strain Pakistan, which is already grappling with its own Baluch unrest, conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan and heightened tensions with India. U.S. policy also has regional repercussions in Iraq, where Iran has launched drone and missile strikes in mountainous areas of Iraqi Kurdistan – likely to preempt cross-border activity.

Escalation without off-ramps

Ethical and regional questions aside, there is some doubt over how successful a strategy of arming the Kurds would be.

U.S. intelligence assessments have consistently found that Iranian Kurdish groups do not currently have the influence or resources to sustain a successful uprising.

Kurdish opposition parties both in Iran and across the region are fractured, with differing ideologies and competing agendas. Although five Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraqi Kurdistan formed a coalition days before the conflict to challenge the clerical regime, it is unclear whether they will stay united or revert to narrower separatist aims.

Some Trump officials involved in the discussions have privately raised doubts about whether the groups’ motivations align with American objectives. As one administration official told CNN: “You have a group of people who are thinking about their own interests.”

The humanitarian calculus

A Kurdish insurgency, however well intentioned, would be fought predominantly in civilian terrain. Iran’s Kurdish provinces – Kermanshah, Kurdistan, West Azerbaijan – are home to millions of people who have already paid an enormous price for their proximity to conflict.

And the Iranian regime’s response to insurgent activity has historically been indiscriminate: collective punishment, executions, the shelling of border villages.

Arming Kurdish groups risks intensified repression against exactly the population whose democratic aspirations Washington claims to support.

The regime in Tehran is under the most severe strain it has ever faced, and that strain may yet produce transformation.

But transformation imposed at gunpoint, through a proxy force assembled in days without a clear political strategy and without a plan for the morning after, is not liberation.

Rather, it recalls the same catastrophic improvisation that critics say has defined U.S. intervention in the Middle East for half a century. And for Iran’s Kurds, it could represent a new cycle of betrayal.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/arming-a-kurdish-insurgency-would-be-a-risky-endeavor-for-both-the-us-and-irans-minority-kurds-277779.