Trump Seeks Kurdish Allies Against Tehran, but Analysts Say Plan Is Risky, Could Take Years

The Trump administration, weighing whether the war with Iran could eventually require US troops on the ground, has begun reaching out to Kurdish opposition leaders in Iran with an offer of “extensive US aircover” as it looks for ways to destabilize the regime while the American-Israeli campaign intensifies, an idea one analyst told The Algemeiner would be very difficult to translate into action.

The outreach comes amid reports from Iran that it had preemptively attacked Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming the strikes caused heavy losses.

According to The Washington Post, which cited people familiar with the matter, US President Donald Trump held calls with Kurdish minority leaders in Iraq, including Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, as well as anti-regime Iranian Kurdish groups about taking control of areas in western Iran.

A senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said Washington asked Iraqi Kurdish authorities to “open the way and not obstruct” and to “provid[e] logistical support” to Iranian Kurdish groups mobilizing in Iraq.

“He told us the Kurds must choose a side in this battle — either with America and Israel or with Iran,” the anonymous official told the paper.

Trump himself on Thursday encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces to go on the offensive but did not indicate whether the US has been coordinating with them.

“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that; I’d be all for it,” the president told Reuters in an interview.

When asked if the US would provide air cover, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that,” but noted that the Kurds’ objective would be “to win.”

“If they’re going to do that, that’s good,” he added.

Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had information that “separatist groups” intended to breach its western borders for an attack.

“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” the ministry said, according to a statement published by the state-run IRNA news agency.

Accounts diverged Wednesday night over whether an Iranian Kurdish ground invasion had begun. Fox News said Kurdish militias based in Iraq had crossed into Iran, but Tasnim, Iran’s semi-official outlet, reported via Reuters that its journalists in three border provinces found no evidence of an incursion. Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, who initially cited a US official as confirming the operation, later said reports were “conflicting,” adding that a senior official in one Iranian Kurdish faction also denied that any offensive was underway.

Peshawar Hawramani, a spokesperson for the government in the federated Kurdistan region of Iraq, known as the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, has released a statement denying involvement in any incursions or armament. 

“[A]llegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded,” Hawramani said, calling the reports “malicious.”

Reports that speak about a role of the Kurdistan Region and the allegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded. We categorically deny them and affirm that they are being published…

— Peshawa Hawramani (@PHawraman) March 5, 2026

The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat outlet reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, have pressed Iraqi officials for details about the phone calls between Trump, Barzani, and Talabani.

Iran also told Iraq’s federal authorities in Baghdad that it “must provide sufficient guarantees and take the necessary measures” to prevent Iraqi Kurdish groups from aiding Iranian opposition groups, the report said, citing unnamed sources. 

Iran’s Kurdish population — estimated at roughly 8 million to 12 million people — lives largely in mountainous western provinces along the Iraqi border, where several armed opposition factions have long operated and where some Iranian Kurdish groups maintain bases across the frontier in northern Iraq.

The country’s Kurdish minority has a long history of political activism based on decades of rebellion against central rule, a dynamic that predates the Islamic Republic. Kurdish forces briefly established their own state in northwestern Iran, the Republic of Mahabad in 1946, before it was crushed, and Kurdish groups have periodically clashed with successive governments in Tehran ever since.

A day earlier, CNN reported that the CIA has been working for months with Iranian Kurdish groups to foment an uprising.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday: “None of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force. So, what other entities may be doing, we’re aware of, but our objectives aren’t centered on that.”

Northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region has long served as a rear base for Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but only so long as local leaders kept them from launching attacks into Iran. That delicate arrangement could unravel if fighters mobilize across the border as part of the wider war effort, said Seth Frantzman, a regional analyst who has studied Kurdish militant groups.

If Iranian Kurdish factions begin operating from Iraqi territory and the broader US-Israeli campaign fails to decisively weaken Tehran, Kurdish authorities in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah could find themselves exposed to retaliation from Iran, Frantzman said. Leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan “have tried for years to keep the balance” hosting Iranian Kurdish opposition groups while maintaining a working relationship with Tehran, he said.

Even if Washington were prepared to support Kurdish factions, turning them into an effective anti-regime force would take far longer than the current conflict timeline suggests.

Frantzman said any outside backing would take time to put in place, requiring logistics channels and training. “These types of programs, advising and assisting groups, or arming them, takes time,” he said, pointing to past US experiences from Afghanistan to Syria as examples. 

Frantzman said Kurdish factions would be looking for assurances that outside support would last, wary of being pulled into an uprising only to be left exposed if backing fades and Tehran reasserts control.

“They would be very wary and skeptical of taking chances today, having already lost lives and lost territory,” he told The Algemeiner.

He pointed to several examples, most notably the US-backed Kurdish campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, when Washington trained and equipped Kurdish fighters to form the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015. The campaign, which took more than four years, required sustained support and came at a heavy cost, with about 11,000 fighters killed.

Even that effort, he noted, which targeted a terrorist group in a limited area rather than an established state, took over four years to complete. Any comparable attempt inside Iran — a country of roughly 90 million people with a far larger military and security apparatus — would be far more difficult.