Electric TrikeMassively outnumbered by #Iranian #groundforces, estimated at around half a million, Iranian #Kurdish opposition groups could likely only muster a maximum of 10,000 fighters, leading analysts to believe that they would be heavily reliant on #US or #Israeli support, including air strikes and supplying weapons.
However, given the experience of US alliances and the fickle nature of #Trump, who has repeatedly shown himself willing to turn on even close allies, it remains unclear whether Iranian Kurds are prepared to risk the prospect of what Tehran warned on Friday would be widespread reprisals.
“Kurdish political opposition to the Islamic Republic goes back decades,” Kamran Matin, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex, told Al Jazeera.
“Since the early 1990s, they’ve been pushed into northern Iraq, where they’ve established a kind of modus vivendi with the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG, or Kurdish region of northern Iraq],” Matin, who is Kurdish Iranian, said. “Given the stakes, any Kurdish offensive on the Islamic Republic would need the KRG’s buy-in.”
“If Trump declares victory halfway through and leaves a wounded republic in place, it will likely have both the means and the desire to punish the KRG and, importantly, the people there,” Matin added. “At the same time, they are not in a position to outright reject Trump’s request.”
The Kurdish experience of past US operations in the Middle East is far from reassuring. In 1991, after President George HW Bush called upon Kurds to rise against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the ensuing rebellion went unsupported, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and years of displacement.
Later, during the fight against ISIL (ISIS), Syrian Kurds became key US partners, only to see US support falter during the fallout from the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq and again in 2019, when partial US withdrawals from northern #Syria exposed Kurdish forces to Turkish offensives, forcing mass evacuations and deepening political marginalisation.
Despite that, Shukriya Bradost, a Kurdish-Iranian security analyst and researcher at Virginia Tech University, said that there was “cautious hope” among opposition groups that Iranian Kurds would be supported by the US.
“However, there is also concern that if Washington reaches an agreement with the remaining elements of the Iranian regime to end the war, Kurdish groups could once again be sidelined and left alone to face a new central government that might continue the same policies of repression,” Bradost said.
#NeverTrustTrump #Kurds #BrokenAlliances #uspol #TrumpRegime #ForeverWars #auspol
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