On Day 6 of the US-Israeli war on Iran, President Donald Trump addressed questions about reports of an imminent ground invasion of the Islamic Republic by Kurdish forces. Trump said that he thought an assault by Iranian Kurds based in Iraq would be “wonderful.”
By Day 8 of the war, he had changed his tune. “We are not looking to the Kurds going in,” he said aboard Air Force One. “I’ve ruled that out.” Reuters reporting from the Iran-Iraq border shows how US and Israeli hopes that Kurdish fighters would come to their aid collapsed under two pressures: mixed signals from Washington and Jerusalem, and a relentless campaign of military strikes and threats against Kurds on both sides of the border by Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Trump announced a two-week ceasefire on April 7, opening the window for negotiations and raising the possibility of an end to the war. That won’t end the campaign by Iranian Kurdish exiles who have taken refuge in Iraq and have dedicated years of their lives to bringing down their government.
In the early days of the Iran war, Iranian intelligence services flooded their country’s Kurdish citizens with text messages warning them against cooperating with mercenaries being dispatched by the US and Israel. A second wave of messages threatened Iranian Kurds who had accessed foreign websites.
By late March, government vehicles equipped with scanners roamed the streets, searching for signals from contraband satellite connections, residents said. These digital dragnets in ethnic Kurdish towns and cities were followed by house raids by officers of the Revolutionary Guards.
In neighbouring Iraq, the IRGC began a pressure campaign with a phone call to the autonomous Kurdish-ruled regional government, which both fields its own army and harbors Iranian Kurdish militias. The IRGC callers threatened to attack Iraqi Kurdish troops near the border if they didn’t retreat in one hour, according to two Kurdish officials. The Iraqi Kurds withdrew from the border and explicitly said they didn’t want to get drawn into the war, but were hit anyway with deadly Iranian drone attacks.
Meanwhile, IRGC drones and missiles picked off Iranian Kurdish fighters in Iraq, killing five and destroying bases thought to be safe, the militants said.
Reuters spent eight weeks in Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region, talking to exiled Kurdish Iranian fighters and senior Iraqi officials, analysing US-Israeli strikes in Iran and Iranian attacks against the Kurds, and speaking by phone to residents of predominantly Kurdish areas in Iran.
Each group had its own agenda and experience of the war: The exiled Iranian Kurdish fighters wanted to overthrow the government in Tehran, the Iraqi Kurds wanted to preserve stability and their own autonomy, and many of those within Iran simply hoped to avoid prison. Up until the ceasefire declaration, Iran had succeeded in deterring Kurdish forces in Iraq from joining the war. Its methods included the use of informers and the precise targeting of Iranian Kurdish offices and compounds in Iraq – most recently on Monday.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders said most of the attacks on them came from Iranian-backed militias inside Iraq. On the Iran side of the border, locals told Reuters that the IRGC sent reinforcements by the busload to prevent an uprising.
Amir Karimi, an Iranian Kurdish commander in Iraq, said his intelligence indicated that the IRGC had deployed men in forests, mosques, schools and even a hospital. An IRGC commander paid a public visit to the region on March 22.
Karimi, who spoke to Reuters in late March, said it wasn’t clear to him at the time what the Americans were “trying to do.”
Bombs on both sides
The Kurds, a people with a distinct language and culture spread across Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, are one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without a state. Historically persecuted by governments, they have obtained formal autonomy only in Iraq. Many Kurds from Iran, where they make up some 10% of Iran’s population of roughly 90 million, have taken refuge among their brethren in northern Iraq. In Iraq, as in Syria, Kurds have generally allied with the US over the years, only to see their hopes for a true homeland repeatedly crushed.
The Kurdish Regional Government operates autonomously from the main government in Baghdad and Iraqi Kurds want to keep that independence. A cohort of Iranian Kurds that most actively wants to overthrow the government has found refuge in neighbouring Iraq, where some have lived for decades.
Many Kurds in Iran also hope for autonomy and are a frequent target of government repression. During the war, they have been seen as the most likely military allies within Iran for Israel and America.
From the start of the war until the end of March, Iran and its allies launched at least 388 missiles and drones against the Kurdish region of Iraq, according to a Reuters analysis of data by the conflict monitor ACLED. Nearly half targeted Kurdish political groups and fighters. Joint US-Israeli strikes hit 140 times in Kurdish-dominated parts of northwest Iran, according to the Reuters analysis.
The analysis is a conservative count of strikes that have been confirmed by ACLED, which is based on reviews of local, national and international sources.
The Israeli government has not commented on what it envisioned for the Kurdish forces. But on Day 1 of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Iranians to revolt. “Citizens of Iran: Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Abkhazians, and Baluchis. This is your time to join forces, topple the regime, and secure your future.”
The White House and Israeli government declined to comment about their plans for the Kurds, and the Pentagon referred requests for comment to US Central Command, which declined to comment. Iran’s government did not respond to requests for comment about its treatment of citizens in the Kurdish-majority regions or its attacks in Iraq.
In a statement to Reuters sent ahead of the ceasefire, the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government was clear that it had no intention of being drawn into the war. “Under no circumstances will the territory of the Kurdistan Region be permitted to be used as a staging ground for attacks, threats, or hostile actions against any neighboring countries,” it said.
The bombings by Iran and its allies were constant – more than 20 drones and missiles were fired at Kurdish groups on March 19 alone, according to the Reuters analysis. Still, Iranian Kurdish fighters, who Reuters interviewed before the ceasefire, said they were ready for the right moment to march back into northwest Iran. At the time, some were in tunnels dug into the mountains of the borderlands.
Kurds prepare, Iran cracks down
Rebaz Sharifi, a commander in one of the Iranian Kurdish militias, spent the first months of winter on a boggy hillside in northern Iraq, training young fighters and developing a network of informers, activists and smugglers across the border in northwestern Iran.
The militia he helps lead, known as PAK, is among several Iranian Kurdish factions based in Iraq that want to overthrow Iran’s theocratic government and create a self-run Kurdish region. They number a few thousand fighters in total. Sharifi, a clean-shaven 38-year-old almost always dressed in combat fatigues, has been in Iraq for 22 years. In exile since joining the opposition, he was buoyed by growing domestic resistance to the Islamic Republic that culminated in mass protests this January.
“Before, we had to go looking for recruits. Now they’re coming to us,” he said in an interview with Reuters in February, before the war started. Pre-war, he said, PAK paid $300 to smugglers and Iranian border guards for each fighter smuggled into Iraq.
Sharifi was also encouraged by Trump’s willingness to take military action against Iran after the US and Israel attacked it from the air last June. He relished comments Trump made encouraging an internal Iranian uprising, both during the January protests and at the start of the war.
But Sharifi worried that America underestimated the strength of Iran’s government. His group has come under cross-border Iranian aerial attacks over the years. He says they were struck by missile and drone attacks last July and in January during the protests. “When Trump told Iranians to take over their institutions, everyone thought the regime had already become weak. But Iran has large forces ready to kill,” he said. As for the Israeli encouragement of an uprising in January, he added that when Mossad tweeted that it was in the streets with Iranians and ready to help them “we didn’t see any sign of that.”
To add to the confusion, Trump on Sunday said the US funnelled weapons through the Kurds intended for the anti-government protesters. “And I think the Kurds took the guns,” he told Fox News. Commanders of the two largest militias told Reuters their fighters received no American arms.
Gareth Stansfield, professor of Middle East politics at Exeter University who has advised the British and regional governments, said the exiled fighters were too few to take and hold significant territory. But they were skilled enough that with outside support they could carve out enough territory in Iran for a broader Iranian opposition to operate, creating a “sort of snowball effect,” he said.
America signals, Iran strikes
As Israeli and American bombs smashed into Iranian cities on Day 1 of the war, Sharifi sent Reuters an excited message. “We’ll be going to Iran,” he said. Then he added a caveat: “But not yet – we need to see what the plan is, what effect the US airstrikes will have.” Neither that day nor weeks later, he said, was there any inkling of what the US-Israeli plan might be.
From Washington on Day 1, Trump called Masoud Barzani, the head of the party that dominates the Kurdish region, according to a source with access to the call’s agenda.
Two other Iraqi Kurdish officials with knowledge of the call said Trump complimented the Iraqi Kurdish armed forces, trying to get them onside for his war. The Iraqi Kurdish officials and a US official said Barzani made clear he wanted to stay out of it, although none knew if Trump made a specific request or how he responded to Barzani’s unwillingness to join the fight. The concern was that Iraqi Kurds would “pay the price” for any attack on Iran, one of the officials said.
In Iranian Kurdistan, state-run television flashed messages on local broadcasts warning people against colluding with Kurdish “mercenaries” or America and Israel, people still in the region told Reuters.
During those first few days, US and Israeli forces conducted at least 20 airstrikes in the Kurdish areas of Iran, targeting at least 12 IRGC garrisons, police stations, border guard posts and other local security installations, according to the Reuters analysis of ACLED data. The attacks appeared aimed at weakening the Iranian government’s grip on the region.
“It’s still too early,” Sharifi wrote in a text message to Reuters on Day 3.
At the time, officials in the US, Israel, Iraq and among the Iranian Kurdish groups gave Reuters differing accounts of how imminent a Kurdish attack on Iran was, who would be involved, and how much support the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel were giving the Kurds to prepare.
The Iraqi Kurdish regional government, which operates semi-autonomously from the Baghdad-based national government, rushed troops to the Iran-Iraq border on Day 4 to try to stop any incursion from Iraq into Iran by the Iranian Kurds, one Kurdish official and a senior Kurdish leader said.
Almost immediately, phone calls came from the IRGC in Iran with a blunt message: Pull back within an hour, or missiles will rain down on you.
The Iraqi Kurdish government protested: Their troops were deployed to put a stop to any cross-border activity, not to threaten Iran, said the sources, who had direct knowledge of the events that day. The IRGC didn’t care, the two Kurdish sources said. The Iranian commanders said no armed presence at the border would be tolerated. The Iraqi Kurds pulled back.
The next morning, Sharifi sent a dejected message from nearby. “We’ve just been hit by Iranian ballistic missiles, one fighter is dead, three others are wounded,” he told Reuters. The attack was precise, hitting the house his group used as an office, and where Sharifi had spoken to Reuters reporters two weeks earlier.
In the coming days, Sharifi’s militia and dozens of others were targeted across northern Iraq. In all, the strikes killed at least five fighters from different Kurdish militias over several days and damaged bases they had thought were well camouflaged in small towns and on remote mountainsides.
“The Iranians knew where our bases were. They have informants tracking our movements,” said Karim Parwizi, a commander in another group, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, or PDKI.
Parwizi met with Reuters soon after the Iranian strikes began, in a compound used by the group’s fighters and their families. The families had been moved out for their safety after Iranian strikes, and Parwizi remained indoors before, during and after the interview.
Caught between Trump and Iran
The Iranian threats against the Iraqi Kurds didn’t stop there.
Two US-based sources with knowledge of the communications with the Kurds told Reuters that Israel had been cultivating the exiled Iranian Kurdish militias for some time. The sources said the Israelis never outlined to the Kurdish forces what their role would be. The Kurdish commanders interviewed by Reuters also said they had no inkling of a specific plan.
On Day 6 of the war, Trump addressed questions from Reuters about reports of an imminent ground invasion by the Iranian Kurds.
“I think it's wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it,” the president said. He added that the Kurds’ objective should be “to win.”
That day, the Iranians delivered a warning in person to the government in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“A ranking Islamic Republic figure paid us a visit,” the senior Iraqi Kurdish leader said, declining to identify the emissary. The new message: Iran’s command-and-control structure had changed.
Top officers in Tehran weren’t necessarily going to issue direct orders any longer. Instead, IRGC commanders in the field and their militia allies in Iraq would be operating on their own, the Iraqi Kurdish leader recalled. This meant that in the event of an Iranian attack, any appeals by Iraqi Kurdish leaders for restraint to the IRGC in Tehran might have no effect. The official did not say how the Iraqi Kurds responded but said the visit made their vulnerability clear.
Over the next few days, the Iranians attacked far and wide.
They struck a compound that local officials and a Western diplomat said houses CIA staff in eastern Iraq. The CIA declined to comment.
Another strike hit a former U.N. guest house in Sulaymaniyah. Other attacks were directed at a military base housing U.S. troops in the Kurdish regional capital Erbil, killed a French soldier, and hit the semi-autonomous region’s own security forces. A volley of six Iranian ballistic missiles killed six Iraqi Kurdish fighters and wounded 30 others, the Erbil government said on March 24.
The senior Iraqi Kurdish leader and several other security officials said that most of the strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan during the war were drone attacks by IRGC-backed Iraqi militias. These forces, they said, were operating under a devolved command-and-control structure that included IRGC commanders based in Iraq and acting on their own initiative.
Most of the drones are produced in Iraq, the Kurdish leader and two other Kurdish officials said. Sirwan Barzani, a commander of Iraqi Kurdish forces, said the drones were often older Iranian Shaheds, not Tehran’s latest model. A Reuters reporter saw two such drones – with the same shape of the older Shaheds – flying over Erbil during a series of attacks on March 18. In Washington, American lawmakers were getting warnings from the foreign minister of Turkey.
Turkey has its own Kurdish separatist movement, and the foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, was urging the US to oppose any involvement of Kurdish fighters in a cross-border operation. Fidan warned this could stir new instability not just in Iran, but also in Turkey and even Syria, according to a source briefed on those meetings. Turkey did not respond to a request for comment.
By Day 8 of the war, Trump appeared to drop his hopes of a Kurdish front against Iran, telling reporters aboard Air Force One he’d “ruled that out.”
Sulaymaniya saw a night free of strikes, the senior Kurdish leader said.
‘We're still going to be killed’
A few days after Trump’s volte-face, Sharifi left the mountains for a break and drove to Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil, in an armoured car. He sat in a cafe, but didn’t relax for long. His phone soon rang with news that his fighters had been targeted by another drone, although this one hadn’t exploded.
Instead of planning for military action in Iran, Sharifi was spending his time dodging air raids, including two in the first week of April, and trying to bypass Iran’s near-total internet blackout to get updates from inside the country.
He said that moving fighters between Iran and Iraq became impossible, even when offering a higher fee of $500 for smugglers and border guards. The increased IRGC presence in Kurdish areas of Iran had shut the border.
Sharifi said Kurdish militants managed to send Starlink devices before the war to activists inside Iran, who periodically relayed information back over the border about the movements of IRGC and local security forces. Sometimes, he said, a local operative alerted the Iraq-based Kurdish forces to an incoming missile with just enough time for them to scramble for cover.
The Iranians, too, took hits on their side of the border, according to Sharifi, PDKI commander Parwizi and residents of the majority-Kurdish part of Iran.
They said airstrikes flattened many IRGC and local police stations in the area. The attacks caused local Iranian security forces to relocate, with some fleeing to remote mountain areas and others sleeping in their cars to avoid being targeted. Families of IRGC members moved out of their homes, they said.
Iranian Kurdish commanders in exile said the signs pointed to a weakened Iranian government. But even a weak government could kill protesters again, scaring most people from taking action, they said. Witnesses in a village outside the Iranian city of Baneh, near the Iran-Iraq frontier, told Reuters they saw a convoy of 50 buses filled with IRGC men on the move on March 22, headed toward the border.
Without an uprising under way in Iran, the Iranian Kurdish commanders said, an invasion was too risky. So they wait on the Iraqi side of the border, ready for another day. The ceasefire gave Sharifi little cause for hope.
“We’re still under the occupation of the Islamic Republic,” he said. “If there's an agreement between the US and Iran, we're still going to be killed and executed.”