The US and Israel rapidly established air superiority over Iran in the first days of the war now under way in the Middle East. Regimes, however, cannot be destroyed from the air. President Trump clearly has no intention of committing a large ground force to Iran. If Washington and Jerusalem are serious in their stated ambition of destroying the 47-year-old Islamic regime in Tehran, then they are in obvious need of allies on the ground. A number of credible reports in regional media in recent days have identified a relationship of cooperation between the US and Israel and a number of armed Iranian Kurdish groups located in the Iraq-Iran border area.

A recent article on the al-Monitor website suggested that fighters of these organisations may deploy across the border in the coming days. Subsequent statements by President Trump and other senior officeholders have lowered expectations regarding imminent action in this regard. But the original reports concerning contacts and cooperation were confirmed by my own sources in this area. 

The Iranian Kurds are centrally concerned with the extent to which their allies are serious

The Iranian Kurds are centrally concerned with the extent to which their allies are serious

So who are the organisations in question, and what might they be able to achieve, should American and Israeli support for them prove real, serious and durable?

The presence of armed Iranian Kurdish organisations in the border area is not new, though before the last couple of weeks they received hardly any attention in the West. I have visited the bases of several of these groups in the border area in two reporting projects in 2018 and late 2022, and am in regular contact with senior members of a number of them. My 2018 visit included an occasion on which I accompanied a patrol by the armed PDKI group in the border area, in order to photograph an IRGC installation on the Iranian side.  

What is the point of an........

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