When Israel and the U.S. launched their war on Iran, a flurry of media reports suggested that CIA-armed Kurdish forces were preparing to enter Iran and help topple the Islamic Republic. That outcome was always unlikely. Just months earlier, the latest chapter in the Kurds’ long history of exploitation by the West was being written in neighboring Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan.
Rojava’s Kurds spent years fighting Islamic State, or ISIS, in line with Western interests. But their long-term goal of meaningful political autonomy crumbled in January as Washington greenlit an offensive by the pro-Western, Islamist Syrian government against the Syrian Kurds. “After years of Kurdish collaboration with the West’s anti-ISIS coalition, they were abandoned overnight,” says Adnan Hassanpour, an exiled Iranian Kurdish journalist who spent 10 years on death row in Tehran. “These experiences are fresh in our memory.” Now the West has come knocking on Kurdish doors once again. Washington’s latest bout of interest is focused on the exiled Iranian Kurdish parties that have established a network of safe houses, military bases and refugee camps in the semiautonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). These groups cover the political spectrum from staunch Kurdish nationalists who welcome U.S. action against Iran, to leftists who say attempted U.S.-Israeli exploitation of Kurdish aspirations is “poisoning” their movement. But no matter their politics, the Kurds are generally united in a realistic assessment that the U.S.-Israeli intervention is bringing their long-suffering people grave risks and few rewards.
U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran began on Feb. 28, killing thousands to date. Since then, Iran has targeted the Iraqi Kurdish region with over 700 strikes — more than any other noncombatant country. During a two-month internet blackout, exiled Iranian Kurds in Iraq risked these bombings while driving up to the 1,000-kilometer Iraq-Iran border, desperately trying to contact relatives on the other side. Exiled Iranian Kurdish activist Keywan, whose family members in Iran have suffered torture and interrogation as a result of his activities, describes patching calls through multiple phones and limiting himself to 20-second conversations with each relative in a bid to evade detection by Iranian intelligence services. The aftermath of an Iranian airstrike on the headquarters of an Iranian Kurdish opposition party in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. (Matt Broomfield) “We didn’t have any role in starting this war, and we don’t have any role in it continuing or stopping,” Hassan Sharifi, a member of the executive board of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, told me in his party headquarters, overlooked by martyr portraits. “But still they are bombing us every day.” An estimated 40 million ethnic Kurds are spread out across an ancestral homeland that remains divided between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. In Iraq, 6 million Kurds won a precarious autonomy after partnering with the U.S. during two Persian Gulf wars. Across the border in Iran, 10 million Kurds continue to fight for their culture, language and political aspirations. In 2022, the murder of an Iranian Kurdish woman, Jina Mahsa Amini, by the Islamic government’s morality police inspired Kurdish protesters to launch the nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom movement, but brought no lasting change. “A defenseless people went out to demand freedom, and they answered us with AK-47s.” “I joined the ‘women’s revolution,’ and saw with my own eyes how they gunned protesters down in the street. A defenseless people went out to demand freedom, and they answered us with AK-47s,” says exiled Iranian Kurd Nazir, 27, holding his rifle as he gazes across the mountain ridges toward Iran. Those experiences drove him to join the armed groups known as the peshmerga in the Iraqi Kurdish mountains, where he looked on helplessly from afar as his compatriots once again took to the streets in January, when the Iranian regime blamed the Kurdish opposition for organizing nationwide protests. At least 6,000 people were killed, including hundreds of Kurds, as President Donald Trump ’s social media promise that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” once again failed to materialize.
Whatever their view on the conflict, Kurds are realistic about the West’s intentions. As scattered Iranian strikes continued to hit the Iranian Kurdish opposition groups despite the supposed ceasefire, I drove up into the mountains separating Iraq from Iranian Kurdistan to meet a group of peshmerga fighters based around an hour from the border. As we drank tea out of old whiskey glasses around an open fire, their opinions ranged from the optimism of youth to decades-old, battle-hardened cynicism.
“I’m personally against this war and don’t want to see anyone killed. But if the U.S. and Israel want it, the [Iranian] regime will fall,” young fighter Nazir says. But an elderly fighter named Adib chimes in to urge caution, recalling his days battling the Western-allied shah as a teenage communist militant in the run-up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “The U.S. and Israel won’t give us anything we can’t take for ourselves,” he says. He recalls a notorious U.S.-brokered 1975 deal that exposed the Kurds to massacres, after Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state, abruptly terminated Washington’s clandestine support. “This isn’t our first experience with the West. They always try and use the Kurds as a card,” he says. These disagreements play out among the opposition groups. Figures such as Adib Khaladyan of the avowedly pro-interventionist Kurdistan Freedom Party are still hoping to benefit from Western backing. “We strongly believe the recent U.S. and Israeli conflict with Iran is the only way to put an end to the regime,” he tells me. But Ibrahim Alizade, a veteran communist politician, agrees with his peshmerga. “This war isn’t a chance to take down the regime,” he says. “It’s a chance for the regime to lengthen its existence.” Exiled Kurdish fighter Nazir, 27, left home after joining the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran. (Matt Broomfield) Whatever their differences of opinion, these groups are ultimately bound to respect the wishes of their hosts in the KRI. It’s the KRI’s political leadership who exchanged phone calls with Trump in the early days of the war and are now carefully trying to steer a course through the region’s complex conflicts.
“Although we are partners of the U.S., we would like to stay neutral, because this war is bigger than us. We don’t want to be part of it,” says Hoshyar Siwaily, a spokesperson for the governing Kurdistan Democratic Party . Though his pro-Western government hosts the exiled Iranian Kurdish opposition, it also enjoys friendly relations with Tehran, and so “we aren’t willing to let the opposition parties use Iraqi Kurdistan as a base for launching attacks against Iran.” Indeed, the KRI, Baghdad and Tehran have collaborated in recent years to disarm Iranian Kurdish groups and pull them back from the sensitive border regions.
Rather, Siweily repeats long-standing calls for the U.S. to provide his region with its own air defense systems, without which the Kurds will always be at the mercy of hostile neighbors. In Rojava, the Kurds’ long-term nemesis Turkey was able to conduct its own punishing campaign of drone strikes against humanitarian infrastructure and the Kurds’ Western-allied anti-ISIS force, paving the way for January’s Islamist offensive. Hoshyar Siwaily, spokesperson for Iraqi Kurdistan’s governing Kurdistan Democratic Party. (Matt Broomfield) The Kurds remain highly exposed, especially the lightly armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, rendering cross-border action unlikely. Communist politician Alizede suggests that the U.S. was never serious about arming the Iranian Kurds, but rather wanted its better-trained, better-armed Iraqi partners to launch the offensive in the guise of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups. (Senior KRI officials dispute the claim). Material provision of air defense could have made the difference, and seen Kurdish boots hit the ground in Iran. But the West won’t provide these systems, for fear of angering its more powerful allies in Damascus, Baghdad and Ankara. Whatever discussions took place behind closed doors, Trump has since publicly stated he doesn’t want to see the Kurds involved in the conflict, and even suggested that unidentified Kurdish parties had intercepted U.S. arms intended for Iranian protesters — another accusation denied by all parties. “We don’t know which party has received this alleged support. If Trump knows, why doesn’t he say?” asks Iranian Kurdish politician Sharifi.
For now, the primary Kurdish role in U.S. and Israeli policy is as a rhetorical talking point. Genuine Kurdish suffering is used to justify the war, while Israel (in particular) uses the threat of Kurdish insurrection to pressure Iran. But as Washington and Tehran engage in fractious, off-again-on-again ceasefire talks, the Kurds have no seat at the diplomatic table. And their representatives are anxious about what comes next.
Iran has a long track record of exacting revenge on the Kurds. The day after a prior ceasefire was announced following the “12-day war” in June 2025, the government executed jailed Kurdish activists accused of having links to Mossad, Israel’s spy agency. Any surviving regime, weakened externally but all the more authoritarian at home, could win domestic legitimacy in part through violent retribution against the Kurds. Indeed, Iranian attacks on the KRI continue daily even throughout the fragile two-week ceasefire. Missiles soar sporadically overhead to strike Iranian Kurdish opposition camps and offices, killing and injuring dozens.
Even if the current war did result in regime change, it’s not clear the Kurds would benefit. The figure long groomed as the West’s point man to head a new Iranian government is the exiled son of hated, deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, known for cultivating ties with Israel as he lives a life of luxury in the United States. The shah’s son sees no place for Kurdish autonomy in a new Iran, and like Tehran’s Islamic rulers, his mainstream monarchist opposition condemns the Kurds as separatists. “We have experienced the rule of Pahlavi’s father and grandfather, and they were no better than the current regime,” says Sharifi, summing up the Kurds’ universal mood. “Pahlavi doesn’t recognize any of the other nationalities within Iran. He’s a fascist.”
The major Kurdish parties this year united in a coalition calling for a secular, democratic, federal Iran. Achieving this aim would mean coordinating with Iran’s Azerbaijanis, Arabs, Baloch and other minorities, who together with the Kurds make up nearly half of the country’s population. But whether the regime stands or falls, the Kurds are a long way from achieving this dream. Exiled Kurdish peshmerga fighters talk politics around the fire. (Matt Broomfield) All the Iranian Kurdish parties have networks of supporters on the ground, and can mobilize street protests and strikes. But only one has active fighters deployed within Iran — the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (known as PJAK). This party is linked to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was the guiding force behind the so-called Rojava revolution, meaning some of its cadres also have experience in governing and defending a population of millions.
Unlike other opposition groups, PJAK is listed as a terror organization due to its PKK links, and must operate clandestinely within Iraqi territory. “From the outside, the Kurds are seen as nothing but warriors,” says executive committee member Gulan Fehim, in an anonymous safe house in the foothills around Iraqi Kurdistan’s second city, Sulaymaniyah. “But opposition can’t be limited to the military level. We aim to establish an alternative system of democratic confederalism for all the different nations in Iran.” “Pahlavi doesn’t recognize any of the other nationalities within Iran. He’s a fascist.” Like their comrades in Rojava, the PJAK espouses a radical ideology based on women’s autonomy and decentralized, commune-level governance. This vision, which always appeared somewhat utopian amid the Middle Eastern chessboard of global powers mobilizing inter-ethnic conflicts to suit their own agendas, now seems more distant than ever. Rojava spent 14 years trying to implement federal, multi-ethnic governance amid the bloodshed of Syria’s civil war. But the project suffered from repeated military campaigns waged by key U.S. ally Turkey, manipulation by the U.S. in the course of Washington’s war on terror, and Syrian perceptions of the Rojava revolution as prioritizing Kurdish interests at the expense of the country’s conservative Sunni Arab majority.
Rojava’s Kurds had long been key U.S. partners in Syria. But when pro-Iranian dictator Bashar al-Assad was deposed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, an Islamist strongman and former al-Qaida affiliate, that reality changed. “The fall of the al-Assad regime marked a pivotal moment in shaping the new Middle East,” says senior Syrian Kurdish politician Abdulkarim Omar, speaking from Rojava’s de facto capital Qamishli. “The United States now supports [al-Sharaa’s] government and seeks to bolster its stability.”
The U.S. stood by as al-Sharaa’s Islamist forces seized swathes of territory formerly held by the Kurds, forcing them to accept a highly unpopular deal aimed at reintegrating their autonomous regions under Syrian government control. “The U.S. didn’t play a positive role in preventing attacks by the Syrian army,” Omar says. “This was the outcome of political arrangements between Damascus and Tel Aviv, with active Turkish involvement and American mediation.” Once again, at the crucial hour, U.S. and Israeli lip service to the Kurds did not translate into material support. Shino, 31, left behind her home, job as a beautician and child to join the peshmerga struggle. (Matt Broomfield) On the ground during Rojava’s January offensive, frontline Kurdish fighters cursed the U.S. for this latest betrayal and swore to defend Rojava to the death. Today, these same fighters must register into battalions under the command of Damascus’ triumphant Islamist rulers — or face obliteration. The fate of the region’s famed all-female units remains unclear.
Some PJAK fighters, battle hardened from fighting alongside Rojava’s Kurds, have since crossed back to rejoin old comrades on the Iranian border, hoping to continue their fight for a democratic, women-led Middle East in a new arena. But the Kurds’ enemies have also learned from the Rojava revolution, and Turkey has warned the U.S . that it won’t tolerate a repeat of Rojava’s 15-year effort at Kurdish-led autonomy on its eastern border. Meanwhile, Rojava’s bitter experience of ethnic warfare between Arabs and Kurds has dimmed many Kurds’ appetites for forging intercommunal partnerships in the name of “democratic confederalism.”
Kurdish representatives insist they’re ready to advance a radical alternative in Iran. “Our guerrillas are always ready to sacrifice themselves. We have no problem there. But if we enter this war, it will be in response to the demands of our people, not any [external] force,” Fehim says. But as those forces bomb their way toward a new Middle East designed to suit U.S. interests, it will be harder than ever for the Kurds to achieve their dream of a federal, feminist alternative — or even simply to stay out of the fight. A house formerly housing the families of exiled peshmerga fighters, abandoned since the start of the offensive. (Matt Broomfield) As evening falls over the peshmerga base, we drive back down the valley, past houses that once housed the families of exiled Kurdish fighters. Their doors have been marked with red crosses, in an effort to show that the buildings have been evacuated and pose no threat to Iran. But these tokens of neutrality are invisible from the perspective of the U.S. jets and Iranian drones soaring overhead.
We leave behind the peshmerga waiting in their bases, unable to answer airstrikes with their battered old rifles. Shino, 31, left behind a home, an abusive marriage and her young child to join the armed group, risking everything for a new life. “My heart is beating faster,” she says. “The moment is coming. I can feel it.” But the Kurds have lived through these moments often enough before, and though their hearts may beat for freedom, their heads remind them that liberation remains a distant dream.
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