Trump calls on Kurds to aid U.S. effort in Iran, offers support – Kurds are against

The Trump administration, bracing for more U.S. casualties and considering whether to put troops on the ground in Iran, has begun reaching out to Tehran’s domestic opposition as potential allies to foment an uprising against the regime, ‘The Washington Post’ writes.

In calls this week to Kurdish minority leaders in Iran and neighboring Iraq, President Donald Trump offered “extensive U.S. aircover” and other backing for anti-regime Iranian Kurds to take over portions of western Iran, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.

“Trump was clear in his call” Sunday to PUK leader Bafel Talabani. “He told us the Kurds must choose a side in this battle — either with America and Israel or with Iran,” said the official, one of several Kurdish and U.S. officials who discussed sensitive matters on the condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi Kurds, who have long provided refuge for their Iranian brethren on the condition they do not plot against Tehran, risk destroying a tenuous peace they have maintained with the Iranian regime if the U.S. and Israeli war efforts do not succeed.

Like their Iraqi brethren, the Iranian Kurds have in the past focused on regional autonomy rather than secession or regime change.

Representatives of several parties in the Iranian Kurdish coalition denied rapidly spreading rumors late Wednesday that they had begun an invasion from Iraq. Those reports sparked what Iranian state media said was a “preemptive” strike that had destroyed targets in Iraq’s Kurdish region. On Thursday, Peshawa Hawramani, spokesman for Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, said the KRG “are not part of any campaign to expand the war and tensions in the region.”

Trump has publicly called for anti-regime Iranians to rise up and take over their government, but has also suggested the possibility that cooperative elements of the existing regime could stay in place once its leadership is wiped out, a resolution similar to that the U.S. imposed on Venezuela after capturing its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Asked about reports that the CIA would provide weapons to Iranian Kurdish groups, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that Trump “did speak to Kurdish leaders with respect to our base that we have in northern Iraq. But... any report suggesting that the president has agreed to any such plan is false and should not be written.”

The CIA declined to comment. The White House did not respond to questions about contacts with other Iranian opposition groups, including the Baluchi minority or the exiled group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK).

A U.S. official cautioned that the extent of Kurdish cooperation with the U.S. remains to be seen, given Washington’s long history of enlisting their aid in various conflicts and then abandoning them.

The Kurds, in Iran numbering about 10 million across five western provinces, are also among the largest minorities in Iraq, Syria and parts of Turkey.

But they have just as often felt abandoned by Washington. Most recently, the U.S. lifted its support from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish group that had been America’s long-standing partner in countering the Islamic State in Syria as the Trump administration moved to partner instead with the new regime in Damascus.

President Barzani to Iran’s FM: Kurdistan will not join regional war

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani told Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday that the Kurdistan Region will not be a party to the ongoing conflict between Iran on one side and Israel and the United States on the other.

According to the Kurdish Presidency, the statement came during a phone call between the two officials, in which they discussed ties between Iran and the Kurdistan Region and reviewed recent regional developments and their implications.

Both sides stressed the importance of maintaining security and stability and underscored the need to protect border security to prevent any attempts to destabilize the region or escalate tensions.

Barzani reaffirmed that the Kurdistan Region would remain a “stabilizing actor” and support diplomatic efforts aimed at easing tensions and keeping the region out of wider war.

According to the social reporter Tasnim news agencyThe Kurdish Muslim Peshmerga organization announced in an announcement that thousands of trained and experienced Peshmerga of this revolutionary organization are ready to defend the western borders of the country and nip any threat in the Kurdish regions as in the first years of the revolution.

The text of the announcement of this organization is as follows:

“In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Merciful

The noble Muslim nation of Iran

The Kurdish Muslim Peshmerga Organization, while congratulating and condoling the martyrdom of the leader and leader of the free people of the world, Ayatollah Imam Khamenei (RA), and all the martyrs who defended our country, informs you, dear countrymen, that thousands of Peshmerga, John Berkoff, are trained and experienced in this organization. They are ready as in the early years after the victory of the revolution and the years of holy defense They should bravely protect the borders of our beloved country in the west of the country and nip in the bud any kind of desperate movement of the henchmen and self-sellers

Also, this organization firmly warns the deceived members of the anti-revolutionary groups to lay down their weapons and return to the arms of the nation before it is too late and not to make themselves the playthings of the Israeli-American ration leaders of those groups. Otherwise, humiliation and certain death and destruction await them.

Kurdish Muslim Peshmerga Organization”