President Trump is quietly working the phones as the US-Israeli war with Iran unfolds—and he's reaching out to the Kurds. Sources tell Axios that on Sunday, Trump spoke with Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, leaders of Iraq's two main Kurdish factions, in conversations described as being "sensitive," though with no further details on what was said. The outreach underscores how pivotal Kurdish forces could become: They control key territory along the Iran-Iraq border and maintain close links to Kurdish communities inside Iran.
The calls cap months of pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long pushed for strikes on Iran and regime change there, sources said. Netanyahu has advocated using Kurdish forces as a ground component to complement the current bombing campaign, similar to how the US backed rebel minority fighters in Afghanistan in 2001. One official said Netanyahu believes Kurds "are going to rise up," though some US officials reportedly think he may be overestimating the scale of any armed Kurdish role.
Still, "one of the biggest fears of the Iranian political leadership is that instability will encourage ethnic-based opposition groups to revolt and fragment the country," Amwaj Media notes. A Kurdish-Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, the Kurdistan Freedom Party, on Sunday accused Iran of hitting it with missile and drone strikes, per Axios. Days earlier, five dissident Kurdish groups in Iraq formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, aimed at challenging Tehran.
Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga ("those who face death"), have decades of experience in the field, including battles against ISIS. There are tensions, however, between these Kurdish dissidents and exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi—mainly because, under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Pahlavi's father, "Kurds were marginalized and repressed," per the AP.
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