After the failure of a blitzkrieg against Iran, Washington’s “Plan B” may well be a wager on the Kurdish factor. This is not just about Iranian Kurdish groups, but also about forces from neighboring Iraq that the United States, at a critical moment, could try to draw into an anti-Iranian campaign.
Yet this entire construct, however elegant it may look on paper, runs up against harsh political, ideological, historical, and ethnic constraints. The deep internal fragmentation of Kurdish forces, the mutual hostility between rival factions, distrust of the United States, conflict with the monarchist opposition backed by part of the American establishment, and, finally, the dangerous territorial ambitions of several radical Kurdish organizations make this bet not merely risky, but potentially explosive for all of northwestern Iran.
One point is especially important to understand: Kurdish terrorist organizations, above all the PKK, its Iranian branch PJAK, and structures linked to Komala, see the current crisis not only as a chance to strike Tehran, but also as an opportunity to advance their own project of so-called “Rojhelat,” or “Eastern Kurdistan.” In Kurdish nationalist and far-left circles, this term refers to a broad belt of northwestern Iranian territory, including areas where Azerbaijanis have long lived in compact, historic communities. In Kurdish political language, the very idea of “Rojhelat” has long served as the label for the Iranian branch of the broader Kurdish national project, and PJAK operates openly within precisely that ideological framework; specialized analyses describe PJAK explicitly as an organization created by PKK cadres and acting within the logic of “Eastern Kurdistan.”
This is where one of the most dangerous fault lines in the entire story emerges. Because this is no longer simply a struggle against the regime of the ayatollahs, nor merely an American attempt to create an additional internal front against Tehran. What is at stake is the possibility that, under the cover of an anti-Iranian war, Kurdish armed and political structures may try to consolidate control over territories that, in South Azerbaijan, are regarded as historic Azerbaijani lands. This concerns, above all, Iran’s West Azerbaijan belt, where the ethnic, linguistic, and demographic picture is exceptionally complex, and where any project of ethnopolitical border redrawing would inevitably come at the expense of the Azerbaijani population. Even outside analytical reviews acknowledge that Kurdish movements assign to “Rojhelat” not only Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Ilam proper, but also Kurdish-populated districts of West Azerbaijan Province.
For South Azerbaijan, this is not an abstract geopolitical debate or a quarrel over terminology. It is a question of whether, amid the noise of a major war, another attempt will be made to overwrite the region’s real ethnodemographic landscape with the radical map of a Kurdish nationalist project. That is precisely why any discussion of whether Trump might use the Kurds against Tehran must include another crucial question: whom exactly do the Americans intend to arm, for what purpose, and what maps are these forces carrying in their own heads?
The current U.S.-Israeli war against Iran does, in several key respects, resemble another war, the one Russia waged and continues to wage against Ukraine. First, America’s military and political leadership, much like Russia’s in 2022, appears not to have had a fully developed fallback scenario in the event that the adversary did not capitulate in the first few days. Second, in President Trump’s circle, just as earlier in Putin’s system, euphemisms have begun to proliferate, designed to present a real war as something less than it actually is. The Russians had their “special military operation”; the Americans now have “limited combat operations.” And just as Putin once appealed directly to Ukrainians in the hope of splitting the internal front, Trump today is betting on Iranian and Iraqi Kurds in hopes of changing the course of the war through them. The likelihood that Kurdish forces might respond, at least in part, is indeed higher than the Kremlin’s chances of triggering an internal collapse in Ukraine. But that does not mean the United States automatically has a winning formula.
On March 3, 2026, the fourth day of the war against Iran, Donald Trump held a phone call with Mustafa Hijri, a highly visible figure in Iranian Kurdish politics. Just one week before the war began, Hijri had created the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan.
On the eve of that conversation, the Coalition, which opposes the regime of the ayatollahs, released its first declaration, calling on Iranians to engage in civil resistance and urging soldiers and officers in the army and intelligence services to break with the “remnants of the Islamic regime.” The statement said explicitly that defecting to the side of the people was these men’s last chance to save their own lives.
If the information that leaked to journalists is accurate, Trump demanded that Hijri move from declarations to action and launch an armed uprising against the regime. At roughly the same time, he reportedly made a similar proposal to leaders of Kurdish forces in neighboring Iraq.
In both cases, the American side is said to have promised weapons, intelligence support, and air cover for a possible offensive. In the conversation with Iraqi Kurds, the message reportedly took on the tone of a barely veiled ultimatum: either you support us and our plan, or we will regard you as allies of the Iranian authorities.
In broad outline, the American concept looks like this: Kurdish units, armed by the United States and shielded by American air power, rise up, seize control of northwestern regions of Iran where the Kurdish factor is especially pronounced, and in doing so trigger a chain reaction across the Islamic Republic.
On paper, the scheme looks almost textbook-perfect. In practice, however, it is obstructed by an entire set of factors the White House would rather not discuss.
First, the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan itself is an alliance thrown together in emergency fashion after the bloody suppression of anti-government protests in the winter of 2025. It includes forces that are not merely unnatural allies, but have a long history of hostility toward one another.
Today, representatives of these groups say they are prepared to set aside their old conflicts for the sake of two shared goals: regime change toward a secular and democratic order, and the creation of Kurdish national autonomy within Iran. The problem is that the memory of earlier clashes, including armed ones, has not gone anywhere.
It is enough to recall that the six forces within the Coalition differ from one another fundamentally at the ideological level. Among them are nationalists oriented toward cooperation with the United States and Israel, and also far-left Marxist structures for whom America and Israel are not partners, but imperial centers of power.
Today, nationalists from the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran coexist in the same coalition with Marxists from Komala. But in the 1980s and 1990s they were effectively at war with one another, a conflict that cost hundreds of fighters their lives. The nationalist wing remains convinced that it was the communists who started it, and that historical grievance has not disappeared.
More than that, Marxist circles in the Kurdish movement have long been accused of placing world revolution, or at least regional revolution, above the interests of their own people. Because of their internationalist line, Komala is often suspected of serving the interests of outside powers. Even Komala’s official announcement that it was joining the Coalition provoked not support among part of the Kurdish audience, but sharp irritation.
These internal contradictions are not limited to the “nationalists versus communists” divide. Factional struggle within Komala itself periodically spills beyond political disagreement and turns into armed confrontation.
But the most important problem for Washington lies elsewhere. The Marxist wing of Komala has no great desire to fight for the interests of the United States and Israel. It openly warns its partners that an alliance with foreign powers could turn Kurdish areas into the theater of a major regional war. Hence its position: if the Islamic Republic is to be challenged, it must be done exclusively by their own forces, without becoming anyone’s instrument.
In other words, even at the level of first principles, the six forces in the Coalition diverge on almost everything: on foreign allies, on the political model of the future, on the structure of a hypothetical post-theocratic Iran, on their attitude toward the United States, toward Israel, toward neighboring states, and toward the very form Kurdish autonomy should take. That makes the coalition fragile and inherently unstable. It may not simply crack; it could trigger a new round of internal conflict.
The purely military side of the equation is no less important. The Coalition does not have all that many fighters at its disposal, and even fewer among them have real experience in modern warfare. The total strength of armed formations linked to Coalition members is estimated at somewhere between 4,000 and 8,500 men. And only a few hundred to perhaps a couple thousand of them have passed through intense modern combat, primarily in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
For comparison, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps alone numbers between 250,000 and 300,000 personnel. And Iran’s system also includes the regular army, police, intelligence services, and an extensive network of internal security forces. So any ground operation with a real chance of success, if it relies only on Iranian Kurds, looks highly unrealistic. That is precisely why Trump reached out not only to Iranian Kurds, but to Iraqi Kurds as well.
But at exactly this point, the United States runs into yet another problem, one Washington prefers to discuss in a whisper, while in South Azerbaijan it should be discussed at full volume. Because a significant share of Kurdish armed and political structures look at northwestern Iran not merely as a future zone of uprising against the ayatollahs, but as a space for realizing their own national project. And if American weapons and American air power begin to serve the interests of these groups, the blow will fall not only on Tehran, but also on the fragile ethnic balance in areas where Azerbaijanis have lived for centuries.
Above all, this concerns West Azerbaijan Province, and the very name of that province speaks volumes. In Azerbaijani historical consciousness, it is part of the larger space of Azerbaijan, even though it lies within Iran. Yet Kurdish radical circles, especially those tied to PJAK and the ideology of the PKK, seek to include a whole series of districts and cities in this province within the outline of their “Rojhelat.” Across Kurdish narratives, political maps, propaganda materials, and ideological texts, one finds references to Urmia, Salmas, Khoy, Naqadeh, Oshnavieh, Piranshahr, Sardasht, Miandoab, Mahabad, and surrounding territories. For some Kurdish organizations, Naqadeh, Oshnavieh, Piranshahr, Sardasht, Mahabad, and the districts around Urmia are particularly important as links in a single arc meant to connect Iranian Kurdish space with the Iraqi rear.
Here, things have to be called by their proper names. For the Azerbaijanis of South Azerbaijan, this approach does not amount to a struggle for the rights of the Kurdish population. It is an expansionist attempt to redefine the ownership of lands where Azerbaijanis live, where Azerbaijanis for centuries made up a significant share, and in many places the majority, of the population, and where historical memory, toponymy, economic life, and the cultural fabric are bound precisely to the Azerbaijani presence. Particularly sensitive in this regard are Urmia, Salmas, Khoy, Miandoab, and Naqadeh, cities and districts around which a quiet struggle has long been underway for symbolic and demographic dominance.
For Kurdish radicals, Urmia is not merely a major city, but a potential political trophy. Including Urmia within the outline of “Rojhelat” would mean an attempt to turn a key center of South Azerbaijan into part of the Kurdish geopolitical imagination. Naqadeh is another critical node where Kurdish and Azerbaijani lines of contact are especially tense. For radicals, it matters as a zone of junction and expansion. Oshnavieh, Piranshahr, and Sardasht are seen as a natural corridor to the Iraqi border. Mahabad carries symbolic weight for the Kurdish movement because of the memory of the Mahabad Republic of 1946. And Salmas and Khoy interest radicals not only as zones of mixed population, but as territory capable of giving their project depth and continuity.
The danger lies in the fact that the PKK, PJAK, and circles linked to them almost never confine themselves to the language of “cultural rights.” Their political vocabulary is a vocabulary of territorialization. First comes talk of “protecting the Kurdish population,” then “self-organization,” then “self-rule,” then “cantons,” “autonomy,” “federalization,” and, in the end, a rewriting of the map. And when such structures receive an external military resource, they use it not only against the central government, but also to entrench themselves on the ground.
That is exactly why the idea of using the Kurdish factor against Iran is so dangerous for the Azerbaijanis of South Azerbaijan. Because for the PKK, PJAK, and part of Komala’s factions, war against Tehran is simultaneously a window of opportunity for advancing their own territorial claims. And if anyone in Washington thinks this is merely a tactical alliance against the ayatollahs, then they either do not understand the nature of these movements, or are consciously choosing to ignore their long-term goals.
Iraq as a Safe Haven
For decades, a significant share of the Iranian Kurdish armed units found shelter on the territory of neighboring Iraq. The process began soon after the Islamic Revolution, when the new власти in Tehran saw regional nationalism as a direct threat to the state’s integrity.
During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein’s regime armed and trained these forces, using them as proxies against Tehran. After Hussein’s regime fell as a result of the American invasion, and after Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomy took shape, Iranian Kurdish groups retained both their presence and their bases in Iraq. In exchange for being allowed to remain on the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan, they pledged not to interfere in local internal political affairs and not to launch a large-scale war against Iran. Even so, periodic cross-border raids, however limited, continued to irritate Tehran.
After the mass protests in Iran in 2022, in which more than 500 people were killed, the regime of the ayatollahs placed part of the blame for the escalation on the Iranian Kurdish groups based in Iraq. Tehran warned Baghdad that if the threat was not neutralized, Iran was prepared to deal with it on its own, even at the cost of violating Iraqi sovereignty.
Iraq’s central authorities had no desire for an open escalation and promised to restore order. Under pressure from Baghdad, the leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan pushed the bases of Iranian Kurdish groups farther away from the Iranian border and tightened control over supply routes and movement. In practical terms, this meant that without the consent of the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan, the return of large Iranian Kurdish armed detachments to their homeland became nearly impossible.
Trump most likely contacted Iraqi Kurdish leaders above all to secure a corridor that would allow these groups to cross the border. Judging by indirect signals, some form of consent may have been obtained. At the very least, commanders of Iranian Kurdish units based in Iraq began speaking of their readiness to strike targets inside Iran in the near future. Trump himself has already spoken publicly about the potential value of an intervention by Iranian Kurds operating from Iraqi territory.
But since even these forces combined offer no guarantee of success, the question of drawing not only Iranian Kurdish fighters, but Iraqi Kurdish fighters as well, into the war may arise sooner or later with near inevitability. And it is hard to believe that the American side issued Iraqi Kurds a harsh ultimatum merely so they would open the border.
Some American media outlets have already rushed to report that Kurdish forces from Iraq crossed the border and entered the war against Tehran. Official structures in Iraqi Kurdistan deny this. More than that, Iraqi authorities are reportedly moving additional border guard units toward the frontier, likely to prevent unauthorized crossings.
Clans and Parties Inside the Iraqi Kurdish Militia
It appears that media outlets close to the Republicans are, in this case, presenting wishful thinking as fact. Washington understands perfectly well that the Iraqi peshmerga is a far larger and more capable force than the scattered Iranian Kurdish detachments.
The peshmerga numbers at least 150,000 men, and most of them have combat experience from the war against ISIS. For the Americans, the temptation to use such a force in the event of a prolonged campaign against Iran is obviously enormous.
But the peshmerga is not a single unified army either. Real power in Iraqi Kurdistan has long been contested by two major clan-party centers: the Barzanis and the Talabanis. The first is represented by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the second by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Their rivalry ran so deep that in the 1990s it drove Iraqi Kurdistan into civil war.
Today, direct armed conflict belongs to the past, but no durable political peace has ever truly emerged between the two sides. A substantial part of the peshmerga remains loyal either to one power center or the other. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, moreover, had allied relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran in the past, and that inevitably shapes its calculations today. One prominent figure from the Talabani camp has already spoken out publicly against the idea of dragging Iraqi Kurds into a war against Tehran, stressing that the regime does not appear to be on the verge of collapse.
Nor do the peshmerga’s problems end there. Its ranks include Yazidi units, Christians, Assyrians and Armenians, as well as Yarsanis. Among part of the Muslim Kurdish majority, these minorities are often treated with arrogance and at times outright contempt. That weakens the internal cohesion of the force. Reports also surface from time to time of desertions by members of national and religious minorities unwilling to endure humiliation within these structures.
So the internal heterogeneity of the force, its clan-based loyalties, divergent political interests, the memory of past alliances with Tehran, and tensions involving minority groups could all become major obstacles to pulling Iraqi Kurds into a large-scale war against Iran.
The Kurdish Reproach to America
But there is another layer to this problem: the Kurds’ historical distrust of the United States. This is something even Shanas Ibrahim Ahmed, the Kurdish-born wife of Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, has all but said outright. On March 5, 2026, her office released a statement explicitly demanding that Kurds not be used as mercenaries.
The statement recalled the events of 1991. After Iraq invaded Kuwait, the United States called on Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein’s regime. President George H. W. Bush appealed to the population at least twice in what amounted to a direct call for armed revolt. The Kurds answered that call. But when the decisive moment came, they found themselves face to face with the Iraqi army, without the support they had been led to expect. The result was tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Shanas Ibrahim Ahmed’s statement also referred to the war against ISIS. And once again, the same theme ran through the text: the Kurds had been treated unjustly. It was not hard to guess who the real target of that accusation was.
For years, the United States backed the Syrian Kurds in their fight against ISIS. But after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus, Washington shifted its focus to building ties with the new authorities, who viewed Kurdish autonomist ambitions with hostility. In the end, al-Sharaa’s government took control of northern Syria by force, and the Americans did not come to the aid of their former allies. It was after that moment that accusations of ingratitude and betrayal began to echo through Kurdish circles with renewed force.
“Too often, the Kurds are remembered only when there is a need for their strength and their willingness to sacrifice. That is why I appeal to all sides in this conflict. Leave the Kurds alone. We are not your mercenaries.” That was how Iraq’s first lady concluded her statement.
Formally, it was addressed to everyone. But the language of the statement, the choice of historical examples, and the political context made the message unmistakably clear: above all, this signal was aimed at Washington.
Monarchy Versus Republic
Another obstacle to the American project may be the distrust Kurdish forces face from part of the Iranian opposition itself. Iran’s crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who does not hide his desire to reclaim the throne his father lost in 1979, accuses Kurdish parties of separatism and of collaborating both with the regime of the ayatollahs and with Saddam Hussein’s regime. In his criticism, he goes quite far, promising that if he becomes supreme commander, he will deal with these “separatist groups” through the Iranian army.
The Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan responded by reminding him that the Iranian monarchy was also repressive and brutal, and that the dynasty itself had long since stained its name with crimes against its own people. Kurdish forces openly questioned whether Iranian society is prepared to accept the return of the shah’s family.
So Washington is also confronting a fundamental political incompatibility between two parts of the anti-ayatollah camp: Kurdish autonomists on one side, and those dreaming of a monarchical restoration on the other. For American strategy, this is almost a perfect storm: it is trying to rely on forces that, in the event of a hypothetical victory, could immediately turn on one another.
And against that backdrop, what becomes especially dangerous is the possibility that, in the shadow of grand geopolitics, the issue of redrawing the ethnopolitical map of northwestern Iran could quietly advance. For Kurdish terrorist organizations, the project of “Rojhelat” is not a poetic symbol or an innocent cultural metaphor. It is a territorial claim. For South Azerbaijan, it is a claim to lands where Azerbaijanis live, where Azerbaijani identity is not peripheral but forms the foundation of both the historical and contemporary landscape. And if Washington’s Kurdish gamble begins to take shape not in conference rooms but on the ground, it is Azerbaijani cities and districts that may become the arena of a new conflict over belonging, language, power, and memory.
That is why any discussion of the “Kurdish factor” in the war against Iran cannot be reduced to the question of whether the Kurds will help Trump. Another question has to be asked as well: what exactly will Kurdish radical structures try to obtain in return? And the answer is too obvious to ignore. They will want not only weapons and cover. They will want political legitimization of their claims. And above all, they will want it with respect to the disputed districts of northwestern Iran, a substantial part of which the Azerbaijanis of South Azerbaijan regard as their own land.
Taken together, the conclusion is fairly unambiguous. There is no single Kurdish army capable of quickly and easily crushing the forces of the ayatollahs. There never has been. The Kurds do not trust the United States. Many of them do not trust Iran’s monarchist opposition either. Some of them do not even trust one another. Among them are forces that see the Islamic Republic as the enemy, but there are also those for whom the priority is not the overthrow of the regime, but the advancement of their own project of an independent or semi-autonomous Kurdistan, including at the expense of Iranian territory.
And that is precisely why the White House has no easy formula. You cannot snap your fingers and fuse a collection of fragmented, hostile, ideologically incompatible, and territorially ambitious structures into a unified force capable of fighting the regular Iranian army on equal terms. Still less can you do it without collateral consequences for those regions where the Kurdish project collides with the interests of other peoples, above all the Azerbaijanis of South Azerbaijan.
But the absence of such a formula does not mean Washington will abandon the effort. On the contrary, history shows that great powers are often most dangerous precisely when they lack a reliable plan and begin grasping for whatever instrument seems useful in the moment. In that sense, the Kurdish card is not a solution for the United States. It is a multiplication of the problem. And if that card is played all the way through, the consequences may extend far beyond the war against the ayatollahs, striking not only at Iranian statehood, but at the entire fragile balance of power and identity across South Azerbaijan.