Exclusive: Iran’s Kurdish faction seeks contact with IDF

An armed Kurdish group has told i24news they have hundreds of fighters on standby and are seeking to make contact with the IDF.

An official with the PAK says their fighters are mainly based in Iraq with dozens of cells inside Iran. The official says that over the past two nights, regime forces have been heavily deployed in the Kurdish cities of Iran; in the area they call Rojhalat, or eastern Kurdistan. 

There are multiple Kurdish factions in Iran and Iraq; Komala, KDPI, PJAK, among others.

The PJAK and the KDPI and Komala put out statements distancing themselves from separatist ideals and focussed instead on the national goal of advancing Kurdish rights whoever leads Iran.

For Komala and the KDPI, it is unclear if the regime will really fall. 964media cites one commander as saying “Israel doesn’t seem to want regime change in Iran. If they did, they would break Evin Prison in Tehran and similar prisons in other cities. That’s why we should stay out of this.”

There has been some ambiguity in Israel’s message over whether or not it seeks regime change in Iran as a war goal.

Some Kurds are concerned about a push to install the son of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, someone who has a massive following in the Iranian diaspora and who appears to have enchanted western audiences.

When asked if Pahlavi would be acceptable at least as a transitional figure, the PAK official said “Reza Pahlavi's father and grandfather were murderers of Kurdish leaders and activists. During their rule, they stained Kurdistan with blood.”

Giran Ozcan of the Kurdish Peace Institute was more diplomatic, he says Reza Pahlavi would be similar to Hamid Karzai, the American backed President of Afghanistan, Ozcan says “he simply doesn’t have the popular support.”

The Kurds managed to carve out a semi-autonomous state for themselves from the wreckage of the US led invasion of Iraq after they were brutally suppressed for decades by Saddam Hussein.

In Syria, the Kurds who were backed by the west in their battle with ISIS, have managed to cling on to limited autonomy in their homeland despite the best efforts of the Turkish army which is occupying parts of northern Syria and which carries out regular bombings of Kurdish civilians under the guise of fighting PKK terrorism.

Ozcan says President Tayyip Erdogan’s accelerated peace process with the PKK can be seen through this prism. 

There seems to be some enthusiasm that something similar could happen in Iran. The PAK say they want a pluralistic nation where everyone’s rights are respected. This comes at a sensitive time, as Khamenei’s missiles are being fired at Israel for a sixth straight day. 

Some Persian monarchists fear the prospect of territorial separation could push Iranians, already traumatized by a swift and earth shattering IDF offensive, back towards the regime.

Additionally, some Kurds in the region fear separatist talk could endanger them in both Iran and Iraq as Iran’s Kurds have long borne the brunt of the repressive Islamist regime. Jina Mahsa Amini, the young woman who was murdered for incorrectly wearing her hijab, was Kurdish. 

It was the Kurds who came up with the slogan ‘Jin, Jiyad, Azadi’ or ‘woman, life freedom’ - the rallying cry of the failed uprising of 2022 that was brutally quashed by the regime.

Kurds make up around 15% of the population of Iran. They are the third largest ethnic group after the Persians and Azeris.