ZAGROS MOUNTAINS, Iraq – About 5 kilometers from Iran, planes roar in the sky. Do the planes belong to the United States, Israel, Iran? The Kurdish fighter was startled and urged quickly. The last part of his militia station can only be reached on foot, on a steep path covered in loose rock. Out there, everyone is at risk.
A tunnel leading to an underground base in the Zagros Mountains in northeastern Iraq. An Iranian-Kurdish militant group, the Kurdistan Free Life Party, is careful to keep its exact location a secret. Guests must switch their smartphones to aerial mode before handing them in upon check-in.
The Kurdistan Free Life Party is on standby, poised along Iran’s western border to swoop in if the weak government opens the way to strike. The Axel Springer Global Journalist Network, which includes POLITICO, was given rare access to the core of the group and its members, who discussed its ideology, goals and under what conditions they would go to Iran.
Militant representative Bahar Avrin said in an interview inside the camp that the organization already has things “inside” Iran, and that sending a large force against Tehran is ultimately a matter of time and the right conditions. The border between northern Iraq and Iran runs through the Zagros Mountains and is considered porous – to smugglers, locals and the few militants who operate there.
The Kurdistan Free Life Party, which is often referred to by the Kurdish acronym PJAK, is part of a coalition of six Kurdish militant groups that want to overthrow the Islamic regime of Iran and establish a government that is more democratic and provides more rights and freedoms for the Iranian Kurds in Iran.
President Donald Trump has said Kurdish groups in Iraq and Iran are “ready” to take part in a ground attack against Tehran – but has said he scrapped the idea to avoid doing so.war “more complicated than it already is.”.”
A Kurdish attack could spark a sectarian conflict that is destabilizing Iran. And key US allies and their Kurdish minorities – Iraq and Turkey – have warned the idea could spread unrest elsewhere in the Middle East.
The idea, however, could prove to test Trump as the war, now in its third week, continues. The ruling regime in Tehran has not surrendered despite punishing airstrikes that have caused the deaths of its top leaders. Trump may find himself looking for military options that do not pose the political risk that would accompany the deployment of US ground troops.
“The president never takes anything off the table,” said Victoria Coates, who served as deputy national security adviser for the Middle East during Trump’s first term. “And if you were to consider this, this is the last thing you want the Iranians to know.”
Tunnel vision
PJAK appears ready to fight, with a base suggesting a planned military operation. It consists of a tunnel system running through the mountain, with electricity and running water. On the walls hang pictures of fallen fighters – mostly young women and men in their 20s and 30s. Four monitors mounted on the walls show the outside environment. Motion sensors control the camera; when the bird flies on the screen, the image changes automatically.
In a dark tunnel, a 20-year-old fighter holding a gun introduced himself as Zilan. His day starts at 5:30 am and he follows a strict schedule. “Our daily life depends on discipline,” he said. Ideological guidelines aim to build a democratic society; military training is aimed at defending the Kurdish people. See: Discussion
“We never want the help of foreign countries like Israel and the United States,” he said. “We are an independent party.”
The Kurdistan Free Life Party is one of several groups of Iranians and Kurds in Iraq.In 1979, the Kurds in Iran supported a revolution against the shah. When the new Islamic Republic rejected their demands for autonomy, fierce fighting broke out in Iranian Kurdistan. Many groups moved to Iraq, where they now operate freely in northern Iraq, which is largely self-governing from other countries and separate from the central government in Baghdad.
The six members of the political-military alliance are not in agreement on whether they will invade if called upon, and under what conditions they will launch a full-scale war for their political goals.
Some parties seem to want to carry out ground attacks in Iran. Reza Kaabi, the general secretary of Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan, has even posted a drawing, announcing.A US-enforced no-fly zone is a prerequisite for any Kurdish invasion.
There is general opinion in the region that PJAK – given its proximity to the Iranian border and its large military presence – would be one of the six Kurdish militias in the coalition to enter Iran if given US military support. But PJAK publicly rejects the idea that they would do so at Washington’s bidding. It’s a position that stems from mistrust of the US – not least because the US abruptly withdrew support from the Kurds in Syria in January.
When asked under what circumstances PJAK would launch an attack on the Iraqi-Iranian border, Avrin refused to answer. But, he said, his organization “never waited for any force to bring about change.”
CNN reported recentlythat just days after the Iran war, Trump spoke with Mustafa Hijri, the secretary general of another group in the Kurdish-Iranian opposition alliance: the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, or PDKI. It is one of the oldest Iranian-Kurdish opposition parties and has maintained armed units operating from exile in northern Iraq.
PDKI central committee member Hassan Sharafi said in an interview that he could not “confirm or deny” whether such talks took place, due to limited communication between the group’s leadership maintained for security reasons.
Sharafi said PDKI had no “operational relations” with the United States in Iraq. However, at the political level there are contacts: “In Washington, Paris, and London we have contacts, and our representatives there maintain relations. Our relations are diplomatic and political.” Those relations, he said, were long-term: “For more than 20 years we have had relations with the United States and all European countries. We have contacts with all of them.”
Tehran Road
From Tehran’s point of view, the militants represent a serious threat. Iranian tanks have attacked the border area several times in recent days, hitting villages near the border. These attacks primarily affect civilians. Kurdish guerrillas sheltered inside the mountain are still protected. Other militant groups, whose positions are in more exposed areas, have also been accused.
The 2023 security agreement between Iran and Iraq forced Baghdad to disarm Iranian and Kurdish opposition groups, demolish their camps and move them further into Iraqi territory. Now that Kurdish groups are openly considering launching attacks in Iran, Tehran has concluded that the deal has failed, according to Kamaran Osman, an Iraq-based human rights official with the nonprofit organization called.Peacekeeping Community Teamswhich monitors human rights violations in conflict areas.
“Now it believes it must target, destroy and defeat these groups,” Osman said, speaking in the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, about a two-hour drive from the PJAK base.
As of Monday, his organization had recorded 307 attacks by Iranians in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, resulting in eight deaths and 51 injuries.
He sees only a bad situation for the Kurdish people in Iran. “If the regime falls, there is a risk of civil war in Iran,” he said. If the government survives, he fears further retaliation from Tehran against the Kurds in Iraq – Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
If northern Iraq falters, a power outage could occur. The last time order disappeared here, in 2014, ISIS militants took control of a large area from Iraq to Syria, an area almost as large as England. PJAK has ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant group that has fought against the Turkish government, and is listed as a terrorist organization there – along with the EU and the US.
The US has a troubled history of making big promises to Kurdish tribes – and then abandoning them at the worst possible time. After calling on Iraqis to rise up and overthrow then-dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, President George HW Bush refused to intervene when Hussein began slaughtering Iraqi Kurds who accepted the US president’s call. And as recently as this January, the Trump administration stood where the Syrian Kurdish militia that led the US-backed campaign to defeat ISIS a few years ago came under attack by the new Syrian government.
The big question for US policymakers may be how much they would need to support a Kurdish attack on Iran to make it happen. Former U.S. intelligence and special forces experts believe it would require the kind of commitment he would prefer to avoid: a large infusion of cash and weapons, close air support, and possibly ground support from U.S. special forces.
However, a Kurdish-led offensive could falter, leaving Trump with two dire choices: Leave the Kurds alone, or come to their rescue with more American military aid.
“It will require a lot of commitment on the part of the United States and an unclear end-state,” said Alex Plitsas, a former senior Pentagon official who worked on special operations and counterterrorism policy in the Middle East.
While Coates warned that Trump had other, better options, he said that even conventional U.S. military support for the Kurds — such as small arms shipments and limited air support — could threaten Iran’s increasingly fragile government.
The main thing, he said, is to arm the Kurds in exile in Iraq in cooperation with other Iranian opposition groups in the country to avoid the perception that it is coming from outside.
“How effective this is going to be,” Coates said, “is not a bunch of Iraqis invading Iran.”
WELT’s Drüten reported from Iraq. Sakellariadis reported from Washington.
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