CIA Backing Kurdish Forces to Disrupt Iran
What could go wrong?
WSJ (“Trump Weighs Backing Militias to Dislodge Iran’s Regime“):
President Trump is open to supporting groups in Iran willing to take up arms to dislodge the regime, U.S. officials said, as he continues to mull several options publicly and privately about who should succeed the country’s fallen leader.
Trump spoke Sunday with Kurdish leaders, officials said, and is continuing to engage other local officials who may leverage Tehran’s weakness to make gains. The Kurds have a sizable force along the Iraq-Iran border, and Israel has bombed positions in western Iran, leading to speculation that it is paving a path for a Kurdish advance.
“President Trump has spoken with many regional partners,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, without explicitly confirming Trump’s aims.
Officials said Trump hasn’t made a final decision on the matter, including whether he would provide arms, training or intelligence support to antiregime groups.
l suppose the President has to consider all options, but I can think of a dozen reasons off the top of my head why sending in Kurdish forces is a bad idea.
CNN (“CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say“):
The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN.
The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said.
Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border, primarily in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Several of the groups have released public statements since the beginning of the war hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been striking Kurdish groups and said on Tuesday that it targeted Kurdish forces with dozens of drones.
Also on Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke with the president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), Mustafa Hijri, according to a senior Iranian Kurdish official. KDPI was one of the groups targeted by the IRGC.
Iranian Kurdish opposition forces are expected to take part in a ground operation in Western Iran, in the coming days, the senior Iranian Kurdish official told CNN.
“We believe we have a big chance now,” the source said, explaining the timing of the operation. The source added the militias expect US and Israeli support.
Trump also called Iraqi Kurdish leaders on Sunday to discuss the US military operation in Iran and how the US and the Kurds could work together as the mission progresses, two US officials and a third source familiar with the conversations said, as first reported by Axios.
Any attempt to arm Iranian Kurdish groups would need support from the Iraqi Kurds to let the weapons transit and use Iraqi Kurdistan as launching ground.
One person familiar with the discussions said that the idea would be for Kurdish armed forces to take on the Iranian security forces and pin them down to make it easier for unarmed Iranians in the major cities to turn out without getting massacred again as they were during unrest in January.
Another US official said the Kurds could help sow chaos in the region and stretch the Iranian regime’s military resources thin. Still other ideas have centered around whether the Kurds could take and hold territory in the northern part of Iran that would create a buffer zone for Israel.
Either the President has indeed decided, this report is way off base, or the CIA is over its skis.
The last time the CIA intervened to influence regime change in Iran, it resulted in the 1953 coup against the more-or-less democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, that empowered Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. That worked out swimmingly for both the United States and Iran—until it didn’t. Our role in the coup remains an animating force in the country’s anti-American resentment.
We have turned to the Kurds many times, for understandable reasons. Doing so has, to put it mildly, strained our relationship with Turkey, a key NATO ally, and complicated relations with Iraq and Syria. While an independent Kurdistan seems like a no-brainer, no one else in the region wants it. And the last thing we need is to expand the footprint of this war, including the area that needs protection from Iranian missiles and drones.
Persians are only half of Iran’s population, located in the central part of the country. The various border regions are inhabited by ethnic groups similar to what is across the border – Azeris, Balochis etc.
“Longman“
Similarly, while a “two state solution” is very popular in places like the U.S., U.K., Europe etc., no one in Israel wants it. Not after Oct. 7, the trust just is not there.
Yes, while we are destabilizing Iran, let’s destabilize Iraq and Syria and really irritate the Turks. That’ll work.
If that is the case, let’s just come out for creating a new nation for the Kurds and eliminate the post WWI boundaries set up by Sykes-Picot.
Again the world feels the effects of drunken Brits carving up the Ottoman Empire by drawing lines on a map without taking into consideration long standing tribal and ethnic identities. In a more rational world there would certainly be a Kurdistan.
ETA – looks like Scott was having similar thoughts while I was typing. Always happy to be in good company!
Why on earth the Kurds would trust the US at this point, after prior administrations have repeatedly abandoned them, is beyond me. This seems like it could go pear shaped very quickly.
@Jen: While it’s true that we’ve screwed them over repeatedly, it’s also true that they have had an all-but-completely autonomous quasi-state in Northern Iraq since 1991 by virtue of U.S. backing. Additionally, while we may have seen them as our proxies in Syria and here, they were acting in what they believed to be their own interests.
It feels like Dick Cheney and Bolton are back to running our foreign policy. Actually, I guess we should call it neo-con lite until/if they actually send troops in. Or maybe we just call it neo-con Israeli style if we rely solely upon bombing and try to get others to do the dirty work part.
Steve
It feels like Iran-Contra has come full circle.
@Jen: “Why on earth the Kurds would trust the US at this point, after prior administrations have repeatedly abandoned them, is beyond me. ”
Well, sure, they might be suspicious… but this time they’re dealing with the famously faithful Donald J. Trump!
@steve222:
This, and I also believe Trump wants these ‘distractions’ more than ever.
With a supine Republican congressional delegation behind him he is free to exercise force whenever and wherever he wants. And … as we ‘speak’ he’s now running a joint military exercise in Equador – you know, terrorists …
@Kathy: Dealing with Iran, it would seem, is a flat circle.
@al Ameda:
Honest to God, I don’t think this is being done as a distraction. I think this is the kind of thing he wants to do for the sake of doing it. He thinks he did some massively clever thing in Venezuela, and he is a deeply unserious person who likes playing War Leader and sending his toy boats and planes to kill the baddies.
@al Ameda:
Honest to God, I don’t think this is being done as a distraction. I think this is the kind of thing he wants to do for the sake of doing it. He thinks he did some massively clever thing in Venezuela, and he is a deeply unserious person who likes playing War Leader and sending his toy boats and planes to kill the baddies.
@Steven L. Taylor: I believe his pop culture digestion habits are contributing. There’s a certain subset of very unserious people who have watched too many movies and seem to think that action, of any kind, is better than inaction, and that everything will be quickly resolved once “the bad guys” “get the message” that “the US is serious.”
This despite decades of examples where getting *into* a conflict is easy; it’s the getting out and long-term effects that are difficult.
@James Joyner:
You can also look at the Kurdish region of Iraq as “federalism,” given that the Kurds got a carve out in the negotiations for a post Saddam Iraq (yes under American aegis). Without the state within a nation, Turkey would have crushed the Iraqi Kurds as they have their own and threatened to do to the Syrian Kurds if they moved to a Kurdish state.
@Jen: Agreed: indeed, that was on my mind already and hence the post I wrote after I posted here.
I think the point about movies is a good one. In discussions online with conservatives I find them basically quoting movie lines about playing by the rules while the bad guys dont. That justifies the (anti) hero acting outside the law or engaging in clearly illegal activity to achieve a just outcome. They seem to think the movie stuff is real. Reminds me of the Iraq war when conservatives were citing scenes from the TV show 24 to prove that torture works and is a good idea.
Steve
@Steven L. Taylor: It’s a sea of chaos. It does seem unlikely that any particular bit the chaos is designed to distract from some other bit of chaos. Chaos itself really does seem to be the point.
Well, if the Kurds open the gate, there’s a reasonable chance the Turkish army might march through it.
The Azeris of north-west Iran are a Turkish speaking group. Though mostly Shia as opposed to Sunni.
And Iran did a very stupid thing in firing a ballistic missile at Turkey.
There sems a fair probabilty that “decapitation” has led to the Iranian forces going into an uncontrolled “fire everything at everybody!” spasm.
The Kurdish forces concerned are capable of mounting insurgency opertions; I doubt they can take and hold major urban areas.
@James Joyner:
Precisely. They aren’t going to turn down free arms and $$ and of course tell Trump whatever he wants to hear to get that, but are very likely to only seek to carve out a part of northern Iran for their own state with it. The Iranians are very unlikely to deploy meaningful, if any, force to stop that while at war with the US, sure to be pounded by the USAF in the field.
He’s grasping at straws.
@JohnSF:
Incidentally, regarding Turkey.
It has blocked the use of Incirlik for US operations (at least so far) and nobody in the administration has uttered even a peep of compaint about that, compared to the bitching about Spain and the UK.
@Jen:
Is it blind trust? Could be strategic enemy-of-my-enemy opportunism. Like the Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 Because Lower Prices after he messed up their lives before in 2017-2021. The chance to get their hands on Western weaponary is too good to pass up, even if the Kurds despise Americans as much as Shia mullahs.
@steve222:
George W. Trump and JD Cheney do need to distract from the Trumpstein Files coverup, tariff madness, the ICE follies, and other crises of depraved incomptence sapping the admin’s popularity. I do believe Wag the Dog distraction is part of the equation, in addition to general macho authoritarian foreign policy stupidity. It’s a both/and twofer with these clowns, not either/or.
The tactic is also not working.
At this point, the Kurds should be reminded of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.
Do the sub-geniuses running our War-Not-War know that Iran’s military power on the ground dwarfs anything the Kurds have by an order of magnitude? And that our allied nation of Turkey has been waging a war of suppression against the Kurds, like forever?