Putting to one side, just for the moment, President Donald Trump’s talk of highly promising ceasefire negotiations involving an unnamed senior Iranian leader, media outlets report that some 50,000 US troops are already in the Middle East, with the Pentagon bringing in a further 5,000 Marines, and some 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, some of whom have already sailed or are being flown in.   A further surge of 10,000 ground troops is under consideration.

On March 19 the UK’s Daily Telegraph quoted the leader of one of the main Kurdish armed groups, Babasheikh Hosseini, saying that the Iranian regime will not fall without a ground offensive which must involve Kurdish forces. 

“If we are not on this battlefield,” he said, “the end of the regime will either not occur, or be delayed by a lot.”

Hosseini is the general secretary of the Khabat Organization of Iranian Kurdistan, a longstanding Iranian Kurdish opposition party, based in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan. On February 22 Khabat became one of five founding members of a new “Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan” (CPFIK).  A number of think tanks and commentators now adjudge the CPFIK a significant new factor in the Iranian opposition.  The coalition’s objectives include overthrowing the Islamic Republic and creating a democratic Kurdish entity in Iranian Kurdistan, on the lines of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq.  

In practice these twin aims are only partly viable.  The coalition can certainly coordinate opposition and support protest, but its most ambitious goals........

© Eurasia Review