US Arms Kurdish Forces to Drive Iran Regime-Change Push
The move follows coordinated strikes last Saturday against Iranian leadership and state institutions, after which U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly called for a popular uprising inside Iran.
According to CNN, arming Iranian Kurdish forces would require logistical cooperation from Iraqi Kurdish factions — groups with a documented, decades-long operational history alongside the CIA. Separately, Axios reported that Trump spoke directly with Kurdish leaders in Iraq on Sunday, discussing how they might support the ongoing war effort.
Regional analysts had anticipated Washington would deploy Kurdish armed groups as "boots on the ground" inside Iran, drawing parallels to their battlefield role in Syria. However, U.S. planners face a delicate balancing act: empowering Kurdish forces risks alienating NATO ally Türkiye, which classifies foreign Kurdish groups as extensions of domestic separatists who have waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.
Across Iran, Iraq, Türkiye, and Syria, an estimated 30 to 45 million Kurds live with varying degrees of political autonomy — many harboring aspirations for independent statehood. Iraqi Kurds currently govern under a broad autonomy arrangement, while Syrian Kurds were recently compelled to surrender territory and administrative functions to Damascus following the late 2024 fall of President Bashar Assad's government — toppled by Türkiye-aligned militant forces.
Tensions between Ankara and Tel Aviv have been mounting. Türkiye has repeatedly condemned Israel over what it characterizes as genocidal conduct in Gaza. At a U.S. event in February, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett escalated the rhetoric, labeling Türkiye "the next Iran" threatening Israel.
Washington and Tel Aviv have publicly justified their assault on Iran as necessary to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons — a claim Iranian officials categorically deny. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has since cautioned that the unlawful precedent set by the U.S. and Israel will push additional nations toward pursuing nuclear deterrence capabilities.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan echoed that warning last month, stating that should the Middle East slide into a nuclear arms race, Ankara would have no choice but to join it.
Beyond Kurdish proxies, Washington has also backed the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) — a now-exiled, formerly leftist Iranian organization that controversially aligned with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s — as part of its broader portfolio of non-Kurdish opposition assets inside and outside Iran.
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