In the second week of the US-Israel war on Iran, which started on 28 February, US President Donald Trump proposed possible US support for the Kurds of Iran to act against the regime in Tehran. As the war moves well into its fourth week, nothing significant has happened to indicate that such cooperation will materialise. However, over the past two weeks, there has been considerable interest in understanding the ethnic profile of Iran and the possible role that the Kurds, or any other ethnic group, could play in this war.
According to a recent political paper published by the ECSS, despite their grievances, the Kurds of Iran—or, for that matter, any other ethnic group—are unlikely to be a defining factor in the course of the war now entering its fourth week.
Ezzat Ibrahim, head of the American Studies Programme at the ECSS, authored the 22-page paper titled “The battle for Iran: the geopolitical dimension of the US-Israeli bid on the minorities”.
In his paper, Ibrahim argues that it is not unusual for the US to try to exercise “political and actually military influence” over certain countries through ethnic groups. The minorities card, he wrote, has long been pursued by international powers at earlier points in the history of the region. It has also been used by Israel since its establishment in 1948.
Ibrahim does not underestimate the extent of the ties that the US has been building with minorities in the Middle East, a region of significant strategic importance to Washington, since the end of the Second World War.
“All across the Middle East, these groups are far from being on the periphery of events; they are rather of consequential influence on strategic balances during conflicts in the region,” he wrote.
However, he cautioned that in the case of Iran, one should be careful in assuming that the country’s wide ethnic diversity, where just over 50 percent of its nearly 90 million population is of Persian ethnicity, would work against the regime in Tehran.
“History shows that in the case of Iran this ethnic diversity was not a source of weakness for the state but rather integral to its social structure,” he wrote. Clearly, he added, it is difficult to argue that relations between Tehran and all ethnic groups are managed in the same way. These relations, he said, “are better managed in some cases than others, where they face economic and security challenges”.
“The Azari minority, for example, is quite well integrated into the structure of the regime,” Ibrahim wrote. He noted that former Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israel war on Iran, has Azari origins. With his son Mojtaba having succeeded him, the Azari representation at the very top of Iran's political hierarchy remains intact.
Ibrahim argued that the Kurds of the Middle East, in particular, have long been at the top of the list of ethnic groups with which the US has sought to build ties—“as was the case with the Kurds of Iraq”, who opposed Soviet influence in Iraq during the Cold War, as well as the Baathist regime in Baghdad, a self-declared adversary of Israel and, to some extent, the US.
“Actually, it was not just the US that offered support to the Kurds; Iran, under the rule of [Mohamed Reza Pahlavi], and Israel both reached out to the Kurds in Iraq,” Ibrahim wrote. He noted that this relationship had many ups and downs, especially after the end of the Shah’s rule in Iran in 1979 and the end of the Cold War a little over a decade later.
Ibrahim added that shortly afterwards, in 1991, following the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, the US again reached out to the Kurds. He noted that despite the hardships they faced under the Baghdad regime in the final decade of the 20th century, the Kurds continued to cooperate with the US and played a consequential role in the 2003 US war to topple Saddam Hussein.
He noted that this involved the Peshmerga, an armed Kurdish group in Iraq. “In this case, we are actually talking about militant groups within ethnic minorities, not the ethnic minorities as a whole,” Ibrahim wrote.
Equally, he wrote, Israel maintained close cooperation with some ethnic militant groups in the Middle East, including the Kurds of Iraq, “given the fact that Israel perceived the [Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad] as a firm adversary”.
Another clear example, Ibrahim noted, was cooperation between Israel and some militias in Lebanon during the country’s 15-year civil war between 1975 and 1990. Israel had hoped this would help engineer a pro-Israeli regime in Beirut, particularly after its 1982 invasion, but a protracted and complex conflict ultimately thwarted that aim.
However, Ibrahim noted that Israel did not abandon its strategy of building ties with minorities in the Middle East, especially in countries it perceived as adversaries. This included the Kurds, the Druze in Syria and Lebanon, and others.
Given this complex history, Ibrahim argues that it is wrong to assume that the US and Israel would gain more from the Kurds of Iran in the current conflict than they have from other ethnic groups since the late 1940s.
While acknowledging that the Iranian bloc of Persian origin is concentrated in the centre of the country, surrounded by minorities, Ibrahim argued that this has historically prompted sensitivity from the centre toward the periphery.
Since the start of the current war, the paper notes that little action has been observed among ethnic minorities in Iran, including those with armed groups. “So far, there has been no radical change in the state of affairs of minorities in Iran,” he wrote. Still, he added that a prolonged conflict could prompt change, particularly if it leads to severe economic decline.
For now, Ibrahim wrote, the regime in Tehran has been emphasising national unity in the face of foreign intervention. This approach, he added, often helps garner support across the country. After all, he stressed, Iran is an old state that has historically found ways to manage the expectations and pressures of its minorities, even during periods of tension.
Moreover, he noted that most of Iran’s minorities have cross-border ties, making it unlikely that neighbouring countries would support efforts to empower these groups within Iran.
In conclusion, Ibrahim argued that unless the current US-Israel war leads to radical regime change or significantly weakens the existing system through a prolonged conflict, it is unlikely to produce a major shift in the role or position of Iran’s ethnic groups, including the Kurds. “It is true that the minorities are considered an element of the conflict, but ultimately this element is subject to the influences of the larger context of the conflict with its many economic, political, and regional influences,” he wrote.
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