Reports this week of a new Kurdish front in the war for Iran are greatly exaggerated. That is the view of Abdullah Mohtadi, the exiled secretary general of the Komala Party of Iran’s Kurdish provinces. “We haven’t been engaged with the Americans about the substance of their support and protection yet,” he told The Free Press. “It’s too hypothetical now to say.”
Last week President Donald Trump spoke with leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government in neighboring Iraq. The two main Kurdish parties in Iran—Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI)—have bases on the Iraqi side of the country’s border with Iran. But these Iranian Peshmerga fighters have not yet been deployed into Iran. Trump discussed the prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters entering Iran to serve as boots on the ground after the regime falls. CNN reported last week that the Central Intelligence Agency is considering funding and arming these groups to help foment an uprising against Iran’s regime.
