By Ahmad Ali
The US-Iran war has entered a dangerous new phase. With American and Israeli airstrikes entering their second week, Washington is quietly pivoting to a strategy as old as the empire itself: activating the Kurds for a ground war against Tehran.
Only a day after the start of Operation Epic Fury, on March 1, President Donald Trump had telephone discussions with the two strongest leaders of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) representative Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) representative Bafel Talabani. According to Axios, these talks were facilitated by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following several months of lobbying behind the scenes. The message sent by Washington could not be misunderstood any more: America wants Kurds to wage its war.
To the Kurds, this is bitterly ironic as far as history is concerned. Under Shah, Iran had been in full support of Kurdish rebels against Baghdad. Today, the roles are reversed. Washington is now trying to arm up the Kurds against Tehran.
The epicenter of this crisis is the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region in Iraq, Erbil. Four armed drones were shot down on March 2 over the US military base at Erbil International Airport. Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed group, has taken responsibility for various attacks. Prime Minister Masrour Barzani has denounced these attacks. But Baghdad is in an impossible situation. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani insists that “the state, through its institutions, alone possesses the right to decide on war and peace” and has vowed to prevent anyone from “dragging Iraq into conflicts”. But Iraq is already being dragged.
The reality is stark: without Iraqi territory as a supply line and staging ground, any US-Kurdish operation against Iran would be almost impossible. The Iraqi soil has turned into America’s war rear area. The Iraqi government is going through an archetypal dilemma in that by choosing to join with Washington, it will divide along the Shia-Kurdish group, and by choosing to join with Tehran, it will lose the support of the West and face an internal uprising.
There is another volatile aspect of Syria to the west. In January 2026, the interim government in Syria, led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) signed a comprehensive integration agreement, under which the SDF agreed to participate in institutions of the Syrian state. It was a small yet significant step towards the stabilization of northeast Syria. That deal has now been threatened. In case the United States initiates a campaign of active support to the SDF, its long-term ally in the fight against ISIS, as a wider approach towards Iran, Damascus will drop the January deal. A US-supported Kurdish group operating on its territory will not be condoned by the Syrian government. This outcome might be a new Syrian civil war when it seemed to be experiencing a resolution.
This is where another most dangerous variable lies, Turkey. Ankara has spent decades fighting the PKK, which it designates a terrorist organization. Just days before the ongoing war, jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan demanded new laws to further reconciliation and asked Turkey to embrace a legal system to achieve peace. These steps had been received with joy by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. All that may fall in one night when the United States mobilizes the SDF- which is viewed by Turkey as a branch of the PKK in Syria- to act on Iran. Ankara has repeatedly warned that it cannot accept any empowerment of Kurdish troops across its border. If the peace process in Turkey goes astray, if violence reappears in southeastern Turkey, its impact will be felt well beyond that area.
America has experienced this before. In the year 2003, Washington came to understand that it could not control Iraq without the cooperation of the Kurds. Then once again SDF turned out to be the most trusted ground ally of America during the anti-ISIS operation. The same thing happened every time: local allies were employed and discarded.
Now, Trump seems to believe that Kurds can be the ground army that can work as a replacement for America’s own ‘boots on the ground’. There are several thousand Iranian Kurdish fighters who are active on the Iran-Iraq border. The rationale in Washington is that with aerial support these forces would be able to hamper the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, establish a buffer area, and even trigger a larger revolt.
However, the ex-US officials have raised a concern. A former State Department official, Jen Gavito, cautions that the decision to arm Kurdish factions will only serve to increase the instability in the region and undermine the integrity of Iraq, as well as empower rogue armed groups.
What will Iran do, activate its proxies against Kurdish cities? What would occur when the weak government of Baghdad falls? What would be the result in case the peace process in Turkey is killed and the PKK goes back to war? What would become of the January accord of Syria?
This will make the Kurds an active participant since they are considered useful by Washington. However, in the case of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, that utility is a price too big to bear. The United States may believe it can calibrate this intervention but the Middle East does not do calibration; it does dominoes.
Author: Ahmad Ali – Independent Researcher, MPhil IR Scholar, National Defence University, Islamabad.
(The opinions expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image Source: AFP