Syria’s Kurds caution Iran’s Kurds against aligning with US against Tehran
Kurdish residents of northeast Syria warn Iran’s Kurds against aligning with the US to fight the Iranian government, citing their own experience in Syria in recent months as evidence their Iranian counterparts will be “abandoned.”
Iranian Kurdish militias based in northern Iraq have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether and how to attack security forces in western Iran, as the United States and Israel pound Iran with air strikes, Reuters has reported. US President Donald Trump recently discouraged such an attack.
In addition, Syria’s Kurds warn their Iranian counterparts against partnering with Washington.
“I hope that the Kurds of Iran will not ally themselves with America, because they will abandon them,” says Saad Ali, a 45-year-old resident of the northeastern Syrian Kurdish town of Qamishli.
“Tomorrow, if an agreement is made between them (the US) and the Iranians, they will eliminate you. Do not make our mistakes,” he tells Reuters.
Syrian Kurdish fighters aligned with the US more than a decade ago to fight the Islamic State jihadist group, setting up their own semi-autonomous zone in the territory they had seized from ISIS.
But in January, Syria’s new army under President Ahmed al-Sharaa captured most of the Kurdish-held areas in a sweeping offensive. Syria’s Kurds called on the US to intervene on their behalf, and felt betrayed when Washington instead urged them to merge with Sharaa’s forces.
An Iranian Kurdish source says Kurdish leaders did have concerns about being “betrayed” like the Kurdish groups in northern Syria.
The source says Iranian Kurdish leaders had requested guarantees from the US, without saying what they were.
Ahmed Barakat, head of the Kurdish Progressive Democratic Party in Syria, tells Reuters that Iranian Kurdish forces should exercise “extreme caution.”
Barakat says the decision is ultimately up to them, but he believes that “accepting the invitation of the United States and being considered the spearhead in confronting or weakening the Iranian regime is not, at present, in the best interest of the Kurds of Iran.”
Israel has been holding its own talks with Iranian Kurdish insurgent groups based in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan for around a year, Reuters reported last week.