At the start of the now on-hold US-Israeli war against Iran on February 28, 2026, this author speculated on whether or not the United States and Israel would be able to entice the Iranian Kurds’ small, poorly armed, and divided militias numbering possibly 6-10,000 fighters—largely sheltering just across the border from Iran in northern Iraq where they had been chased years earlier by the current Iranian regime—to join them in an attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic. It did not happen, but we now have more information why.
In my earlier article, I noted that the United States has a long record of using the Kurds as auxiliaries when fighting against its enemies in the Middle East. The formula is deceptively simple. Promise the Kurds their autonomy or even independence if they will support the U.S. Usually this has redounded unfavorably upon the Kurds, but not always, the successful Iraqi Kurdish creation of a semi-autonomous government in northern Iraq after they helped the United States overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003 being a notable example. However, although this Kurdish gambit proved successful, Kurdish disaster is the usual result.
For example, more than a half a century ago, then National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, famously and cynically explained U.S. betrayals, “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.” The reference was to when the U.S. deserted the Iraqi Kurdish movement led by the legendary Mulla Mustafa Barzani in favor of what was then the Shah’s Iran. The U.S. abandonment of the Iraqi Kurds in 1974 led to Saddam Hussein quickly crushing them. All this is very well known.
However, much less remembered is Kissinger’s cogent explanation for the U.S. desertion of the Iraqi Kurds then that is provided in the third volume of his White House memoirs. In the chapter entitled “The Tragedy of the Kurds,” Kissinger noted, “forbidding geography, ambivalent motives on the part of neighboring countries, and incompatible motivations within the Kurdish community itself. Those who afterward spoke so righteously about ‘cynicism’ and ‘betrayal’ – having remained silent, or worse, about the far vaster tragedy taking place in Indochina – never put forward an alternative course, we could, in fact, have pursued.” This, of course, was a sad but largely honest explanation for the U.S. action.
The realistic practitioner of and scholar of sophisticated statecraft then further mused, “As a case study, the Kurdish tragedy provides material for a variety of conclusions: the need to clarify objectives at the outset; the importance of relating goals to available means; the need to review an operation periodically; and the importance of coherence among allies.” One might with benefit apply these insights into the current imbroglio involving the United States in its war against Iran so flippantly initiated without any apparent coherent strategy beyond mere hope that superior U.S. and Israeli firepower would lead to the collapse of the Iranian regime. And oh yes, add the thought that once the fighting had begun, Trump’s and Netanyahu’s half-baked idea of “unleashing” the Iranian Kurds as boots on the ground to help finish the Iranian regime off might help. Did the two allies not even think that the Iranian Kurds would remember how less than just a month earlier the U.S. had deserted the Syrian Kurds it had been employing successfully to restrain ISIS in favor of the new Syrian government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa?
So why this time did the Iranian Kurds manage not to take the bait? Basically, because they calculated that it was a potential recipe for disaster both for their militias and even more for the exposed Kurdish civilian population that had just taken heavy blows during the anti-regime demonstrations during January 2026. The Israeli media have also reported the plan failed due to “leaks and distrust.” Everyone was talking about the possibility, so there would be no element of surprise. Many also feared that if the Tehran regime hung on, the U.S. would not protect the Iranian Kurds from inevitable reprisals. In addition, the Iranian regime did not wait for the Iranian Kurdish militias to attack but preempted them by striking their bases in northern Iraq and also putting pressure on the Iraqi Kurds not to allow the Iranian Kurds to use their bases in northern Iraq to attack Iran. The Iraqi Kurds have a long history of cooperation with Iran despite their main alliance with the U.S. Finally, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump’s valued ally and adamant foe of the Kurds, strongly opposed any U.S. plan to empower the Iranian Kurds.
Even the U.S. came to realize that it would be difficult to imagine any strategy more likely to fragment the opposition to Tehran and create a rally-around-the-flag effect that would actually bolster the regime in its hour of need. Furthermore, Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah’s exiled son and potential successor to the Islamic Republic, strongly opposed any possibility that would allow the Iranian Kurds to threaten Iran’s territorial integrity. Although an Iranian Kurdish militia attack might bog down a few regime soldiers, it was highly doubtful that it could affect meaningfully the battlefield that was being decided by missiles and drones.
However, during the January 2026 demonstrations throughout Iran that Trump claimed killed 45,000 although other sources reported much smaller figures, Trump did try to encourage the demonstrators by telling them that “help was on the way,” thus implying that he would send aid. True to his word for once, Trump apparently tried to send them guns to oppose the regime using the Iranian Kurds as the middlemen. According to Trey Yingst, a well-informed U.S. Fox News foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem, Trump claimed early in April 2026, “We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds.”
However, according to Trump and in an almost ludicrous reversal of intentions, the Iranian Kurds kept the weapons for themselves so that they never reached the Iranian demonstrators. This led the mercurial U.S. president to threaten his erstwhile Iranian Kurdish allies that they would “pay a big price.” Elaborating, Trump declared, “We sent guns, a lot of guns, they were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these thugs. You know what happened? The people that they sent them to kept them. They said what a beautiful gun. I think I’ll keep it. So I’m very upset with a certain group of people, and they’re going to pay a big price for that. We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them and I think the Kurds took the guns.”
Although he did not provide any evidence for his claims and the Iranian Kurds denied them, a day later, Trump continued his outburst against the Iranian Kurds by stating that, “I’d rather have them stay away because I think they bring with them some problems and some difficulty. They bring death to themselves.”
One can only speculate what brought on Trump’s outburst against the Iranian Kurds. Was he simply frustrated that his war against Iran had not gone as well as he wished and specifically that the Iranian population had not risen up against it as he had hoped? If so, partially blaming the Iranian Kurds for not delivering the guns might put the onus on these hapless people, instead of his own misjudgments. In addition, exactly how were the Iranian Kurds sheltering in Iraqi Kurdistan supposed to deliver the guns across a guarded and alerted border? Indeed, the Iranians were already firing missiles and drones into Iraqi Kurdistan to discourage both the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds from attacking Iran in support of the U.S. war effort. Was it reasonable to expect the Iranian Kurds to commit potential suicide by trying to deliver the weapons into Iran? Or for that matter would it have been smart to expect the Iraqi Kurds to allow such transit through their territory and suffer the possible consequences?
Without denying the evil machinations of the Iranian regime, others might suggest that Trump too has been responsible for a lot of deaths. Only time will tell who was more guilty in what has been occurring.
Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Tech University and the author of The Kurds: A Divided Nation in Search of a State, 3rd ed., 2019.
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