The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is reportedly working to arm Kurdish militias to trigger an uprising in Iran.
Three sources confirmed to CNN a coalition of Kurds living on the Iraq-Iran border have been undergoing military drills in preparation to launch an attack that would destabilise Iranian forces.
Speaking anonymously, the sources said that the militias have been in touch with both the CIA and the Trump administration to secure weapons for their attack, although the particulars of timing and place of uprising have not been decided yet.
President Trump spoke to the president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) Mustafa Hijri. KDPI are among the Kurdish militias being targeted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) of Iran, with dozens of drones to curb any popular uprising.
On Wednesday, a drone targeted the headquarters of an Iranian Kurdish opposition group in Iraq's Kurdistan region, security sources said to Reuters, without immediately providing details on any casualties or damage
The Pentagon, CIA, or the semi-autonomous Kurdish regional government has not commented on their degree of involvement to the global media.
The ground operation is likely to be launched in western Iran within the next couple of days, a senior Kurdish official said. By the fourth day of the conflict, Trump held a telephonic conversation with Kurdish leaders Bafel Talabani and Masoud Barzani at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu, reported Axios.
A source said that Netanyahu urged the White House to take cognisance of the Kurds as a force at the forefront of an Iranian regime change.
The blueprint includes the Kurds taking on Iranian security forces, to make it easier for an uprising of unarmed Iranians in the country’s cities, reported CNN.
Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary confirmed that Trump has been in contact with many allies in the region, and “as President Trump said today, this was our last chance to strike and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime run by terrorists.”
The Kurds have historically been a regional proxy to the US, having worked together in the Iraq War and in battles against ISIS. Last year, the US built a $796 million consulate in Irbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region, to strengthen ties with the Kurds.
But the friendship between both Kurds with both the US and Israel have been occasionally strained and ambiguous over the years.
Trump’s decision to redeploy US forces from the Syrian-Turkish border was perceived as a betrayal to the Kurds who fought alongside the US against ISIS.
The Kurds lost thousands of fighters in reliance on American protection. The later withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria in 2019 exposed Kurdish forces to Turkish military operations.
In a BBC interview in January this year, a Syrian Kurdish fighter, Commander Azad said, “history will hold them accountable,” talking about the US back-peddling.
Kurds being jostled around and mobilised for geopolitical leverage has a long tradition. In 1975, Israel was supporting Iraqi Kurdish rebels against Iran, but when Tehran signed the Algiers Agreement with Iraq, the support stopped and the uprising collapsed.
In 2017 again, Israel backed the Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq, but when neighbouring powers pushed back, Israel did not intervene.
Repeated betrayals from foreign powers have led to the popular Kurdish proverb, ‘no friend but the mountains.’
For the CIA, arming proxies is nothing new. The agency backed and armed warlords in Afghanistan to counter the Soviets in the 1980s, and later supported them to fight the Taliban in the early 2000s.