CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say
By Natasha Bertrand, Alayna Treene, Zachary Cohen, Clarissa Ward, Vasco Cotovio, CNN
Washington and Erbil, Iraq (CNN) — The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN.
The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said.
Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border, primarily in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Several of the groups have released public statements since the beginning of the war hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been striking Kurdish groups and said on Tuesday that it targeted Kurdish forces with dozens of drones.
Also on Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke with the president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), Mustafa Hijri, according to a senior Iranian Kurdish official. KDPI was one of the groups targeted by the IRGC.
Iranian Kurdish opposition forces are expected to take part in a ground operation in Western Iran, in the coming days, the senior Iranian Kurdish official told CNN.
“We believe we have a big chance now,” the source said, explaining the timing of the operation. The source added the militias expect US and Israeli support.
Trump also called Iraqi Kurdish leaders on Sunday to discuss the US military operation in Iran and how the US and the Kurds could work together as the mission progresses, two US officials and a third source familiar with the conversations said, as first reported by Axios.
Any attempt to arm Iranian Kurdish groups would need support from the Iraqi Kurds to let the weapons transit and use Iraqi Kurdistan as launching ground.
One person familiar with the discussions said that the idea would be for Kurdish armed forces to take on the Iranian security forces and pin them down to make it easier for unarmed Iranians in the major cities to turn out without getting massacred again as they were during unrest in January.
Another US official said the Kurds could help sow chaos in the region and stretch the Iranian regime’s military resources thin. Still other ideas have centered around whether the Kurds could take and hold territory in the northern part of Iran that would create a buffer zone for Israel.
The CIA declined to comment for this story.
‘Clearly trying to jump-start’ an uprising
Alex Plitsas, a CNN national security analyst and former senior Pentagon official under former President Barack Obama, said that the US “is clearly trying to jump-start” the process of Iranians overthrowing the regime by arming the Kurds, a historic US regional ally.
“The Iranian people are generally unarmed as a whole and unless the security services collapse, it’ll be difficult for them to take over unless someone arms them,” Plitsas told CNN. “I believe the US is hopeful that this will inspire others on the ground in Iran to do the same.”
Jen Gavito, a former senior State Department official specializing in the Middle East under former President Joe Biden, said that she is concerned about whether the implications of arming the Kurds have been fully considered.
“We are already facing a volatile security situation, on both sides of the border,” Gavito told CNN. “This has the potential to undermine Iraqi sovereignty and essentially empower armed militias with no accountability and with little understanding of what it may set in motion.”
In recent days, the Israeli military has been striking Iranian military and police outposts along its border with Iraq, in part to lay the groundwork for the possible flow of armed Kurdish forces into northwest Iran, one of the sources said. An Israeli source said those strikes are likely to intensify in the coming days.
Still, any US and Israeli support for a Kurdish ground force tasked with helping to dislodge the Iranian regime would need to be extensive, the people familiar with the matter said. US intelligence assessments have consistently indicated that the Iranian Kurds don’t currently have the influence or resources to bolster a successful uprising against the government, said one of the people. And Iranian Kurdish parties are looking for political assurances from the Trump administration before committing to join any resistance effort, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Kurdish opposition groups are also fractured with a history of tension, differing ideologies, and competing agendas, and some Trump officials who have been involved in the discussions about supporting the groups have concerns about their motivations in aiding the US.
Officials have raised the question of whether that dynamic could jeopardize a US-Kurds working relationship now, given the amount of trust needed for this type of cooperation.
“It may not be as simple as Americans convincing a proxy force to fight on its behalf,” a Trump administration official said. “You have a group of people who are thinking about their own interests, and the question is whether getting them involved aligns with their interests.”
The US has a long history with Kurdish forces
The Kurdish people are an ethnic minority group without an official state. Today, there are an estimated 25-30 million Kurds, the majority living in a region that stretches across parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Armenia. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but the Kurdish population has diverse cultural, social, religious and political traditions as well as a variety of dialects.
Many Trump administration officials have privately warned of the disillusionment Kurdish forces have felt when working with the US in the past, and their frequent complaints of feeling hung out to dry by the Americans.
“There is a concern that if an uprising is unsuccessful and the US withdraws, it will add to the narrative of abandoning the Kurds,” said Plitsas. Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis resigned in part because Trump moved to pull US forces out of Syria in his first term, which Mattis viewed as an unacceptable abandonment of the US’ Kurdish allies there.
The CIA has a long, complex history of working with Iraqi Kurdish factions dating back decades as part of the US war in Iraq. The agency currently has an outpost in Iraqi Kurdistan located near the border with Iran, according to two people familiar with the matter. The US also has a consulate in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and US and coalition troops are based there as part of the anti-ISIS campaign.
Some Kurds had hoped that in exchange for working with US forces, the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq would win its independence, though that never came to fruition.
The US also leaned heavily on Kurdish forces in recent years as part of its campaign to counter Islamic State forces in Iraq in Syria. That has included taking on the responsibility of guarding thousands of ISIS detainees at makeshift prison camps in the north of that country.
However, earlier this year the new, US-aligned Syrian government launched a swift military campaign to take control of the country’s north that included attacks against ISIS and pushing out Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. Facing that campaign, Kurdish forces evacuated and stopped guarding the ISIS prisons when US forces pulled out of the country. In January, the US’ Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said that the purpose of the US’ alliance with the SDF had “largely expired.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting
CNN’s Nechirvan Mando and Alaa Elassar contributed to this story
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