Kurds: The New Strategy in the US–Israel War Against Iran

Unable to defeat Iran from the air, the United States and Israel are reviving an old imperial playbook, yet a recent strategy: instrumentalizing Kurdish forces to ignite internal unrest and push the country toward a Syria-style fragmentation.

The Fragmentation Strategy: Turning Ethnic Fault Lines into Geopolitical Weapons

From the perspective of Donald Trump, the calculation is relatively straightforward. A rapid military victory against Iran through air power alone is unlikely. Tehran’s military infrastructure is deeply dispersed, and its political system has demonstrated resilience under external pressure. As a result, the prospect of a «Balkanization» of Iran has begun. The model is not new. It repeats the Syrian playbook, where the CIA supported and armed groups that transformed internal unrest into a prolonged civil war.

This is not new in Iran either. In particular, Baloch militant groups operating across the Balochistan region of Iran and Pakistan have received external backing from the CIA. Unrest in the region and several attacks targeting Chinese interests linked to the Belt and Road infrastructure projects in Pakistan’s Balochistan have also been linked within the broader framework of geopolitical competition surrounding China’s expanding presence in the region.

Within this framework, attention has now turned to Iranian Kurdistan. Kurdish populations, like other ethnic minorities in Iran, are concentrated in peripheral regions where historical tensions with the central government have periodically erupted. Some Kurdish militias have, in the past, advocated autonomy or even secession. For strategists seeking pressure points within Iran’s territorial structure, such movements may appear as........

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