Separatism Would Hand the Iranian Regime a Lifeline

As joint U.S.–Israeli operations have degraded the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities, the conflict is entering its next phase. Washington and Jerusalem are reportedly considering backing armed Kurdish groups as leverage against the regime in Tehran. The administration has publicly denied the reports, but the military campaign has struck targets in Iran’s Kurdish border regions, including the local border guard command.

This is a risky calculation because these groups are not simply armed anti-regime militias but movements with separatist goals that are deeply fragmented, with roughly ten factions marked by infighting, armed clashes, and tribal rivalries, and some maintain ties to terrorist networks.

More importantly, such a strategy would also risk alienating the Middle East’s most pro-American and pro-Israel population, which has become increasingly nationalist. External attacks did not trigger a rally-around-the-flag effect during the 12-day war or the ongoing joint military campaign because it was clear that the operations distinguished between the regime and the Iranian people and were framed as liberating the nation from tyranny. Arming thousands of fighters from a minority group within a country of roughly ninety million would delegitimize the war efforts and hand the regime a powerful narrative that foreign powers seek to Balkanize Iran.

Iranian Kurds themselves represent only one segment of the wider Kurdish population across the Middle East, yet their opposition landscape is still fragmented into numerous competing parties. At a minimum, there are five core Iranian Kurdish groups: Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), the Khabat Organization of Iranian Kurdistan, and one branch of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan.

Even these labels obscure additional fragmentation. The PDKI itself split in 2006 after a leadership dispute, creating parallel organizations with nearly identical names that operated separately for more than a decade before eventually announcing reunification in 2022. Komala is even more fractured, with several organizations using the same historical name but operating under different leadership structures and ideological orientations. Rival Komala factions exchanged gunfire in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2023, killing at least two fighters. What appears externally as a single “Iranian Kurdish opposition” is in practice a crowded field of overlapping parties, splinters, and rival command structures.

Referring to Iranian Kurdish armed organizations as “militias” and speculating that they can somehow facilitate change on behalf of the wider Iranian nation obscures the fact that they are insurgencies pursuing explicit Kurdish separatist objectives. When the five Iranian Kurdish parties announced the formation of a joint platform in February 2026, they stated their shared objective as “the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination.” PJAK co-chair Peyman Viyan described the aim as achieving “the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination.” Mustafa Hijri, the longtime leader of the DPKI, similarly said Kurds must “determine their own political future.” PAK’s leader, Hussein Yazdanpanah, has repeatedly called for “Kurdish independence.”

Iraqi Kurdistan’s two-party system does not eliminate factional conflict. The Barzani-led Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Talabani-led Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) operate in a political environment that remains heavily shaped by family networks and factional competition. The two parties fought a civil war in the 1990s, and although they now share power within the Kurdistan Regional Government, tensions frequently spill into violence. Post-election tensions in Erbil escalated in September 2018 when KDP affiliates attacked PUK offices, injuring several people. During the Kirkuk crisis in October 2017, forces aligned with the KDP and PUK adopted opposing positions, triggering armed confrontations. Even in a Kurdish region with federal autonomy, armed forces remain tied to family loyalties in a tribalized political order where rival power centers maintain their own security networks.

The clashes are not only cross-party but often rooted in internal family rivalries too. Rival factions within the PUK clashed in Sulaymaniyah during a political power struggle in August 2025, killing at least five people. Similar family-driven rivalries shape the KDP as well, where tensions between Masrour Barzani and Nechirvan Barzani have fueled an ongoing internal struggle.

Any strategy that relies on Iranian Kurdish armed actors also confronts terrorism designation risks. The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned PJAK for its ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), noting that elements of the group’s organizational structure helped establish PJAK’s leadership and governing bodies. The PKK itself is designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization due to its decades-long campaign of armed attacks against civilians. For Washington, financing and arming Iranian Kurdish armed groups risks entanglement with terrorist-linked organizations.

Instead, the strategy should continue targeting the regime’s repression apparatus across the country, as the United States and Israel have done by striking facilities tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij, and police infrastructure. These efforts should be paired with hyperlocal targeting of the specific units and squads deployed in cities to suppress protests.

At the same time, as President Trump and Iranian opposition leader Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi have separately noted, communication with Iranians inside the country will be key to signal when the time is right for a mass uprising and encourage citizens to seize strategic locations, including police stations, as occurred during the 1979 revolution. This would ensure that any post-regime government emerges as a national government representing the Iranian people and capable of becoming a partner to both the United States and Israel.

Janatan Sayeh is the Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focused on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence.