Kurdish-Iranian militias have launched a ground operation in northwestern Iran. Several American media, including Fox News or the Axios server, are writing about it. However, the Reuters agency refuted the report with a reference to the Iranian news agency Tasnim. CNN already reported on Wednesday, citing its sources, that the American Central Intelligence Service (CIA) is working on arming the Kurdish forces with the aim of provoking a popular uprising in Iran.
“The sources are anonymous, we know very little about what the scope (of the operation) should be. It’s probably obvious that the strategic goal will be to further destabilize the Iranian regime and put another wrinkle on its forehead, so to speak. We have to realize that Iran is a multi-ethnic society, so if the U.S. succeeds in starting a major (Kurdish) insurgency, it will be a big problem for the regime. But there is tremendous potential for dangerous escalation and for that it will develop into a civil war,” pointed out Americanist Jiří Pondelíček.
In February, five exiled Kurdish groups, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI) and the exiled separatist group the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), announced the formation of a political coalition aimed at toppling the regime in Tehran and securing the right to self-determination. Although these groups have waged an armed struggle against the Iranian regime in the past, in recent years they have focused more on political campaigning.
“There has been speculation about this for some time, after all, over the weekend, US President Donald Trump spoke on the phone with a number of representatives of some Kurdish militias and factions that are in Iraq, but which are opposition factions to the current Iranian regime,” described CT correspondent in Turkey Andreas Papadopulos.
According to a high-ranking representative of the Iranian Kurds, US President Donald Trump spoke with PDKI Chairman Mustafa Hijri on Tuesday.
These factions, according to Papadopoulos, operate interconnectedly across the entire Kurdish-populated region, which includes not only Iran and Iraq, but also Syria and Turkey. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a few hours ago that the US military has no plans to involve the Kurds in the war, Papadopulos further pointed out.
“Some Kurdish factions already announced (on Wednesday) evening that they are not part of the war in Iran,” the ČT reporter continued. This is particularly true of Iran’s largest Kurdish exile political party, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). However, this does not mean that the reports of the American and Israeli media cannot be true, added Papadopulos.
However, Iran’s Tasnim news agency wrote on Thursday that its reporters working in three border provinces denied reports of Kurdish militants crossing the border from Iraq into Iran.
Papadopulos pointed out that there are at least five Kurdish factions and groups in Iraq that have “unsettled scores” with the current Iranian regime. They have more than a thousand fighters and sufficient military equipment to carry out this invasion. However, they do not have such numbers of fighters to face the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. According to Papadopoulos, the number is disproportionate by roughly ten to one.
“All the plans and analyzes leaked to the media that counted on the involvement of the Kurds never talked about any long, drawn-out offensive towards Tehran. Rather, their involvement was supposed to involve the employment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the west and northwest of the country,” Papadopulos added, adding that the intention was to employ the Guards “as something other than suppressing protests in major Iranian cities.”
Earlier, the AFP agency reported on Wednesday that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards hit the base of Kurdish anti-regime armed groups with three ballistic missiles on the territory of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi police sources, according to Reuters, reported that an airstrike killed one of the commanders of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which is the umbrella organization of pro-Iranian armed groups in Iraq.
