Iran: Trump, Netanyahu, and the Kurdish Option

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Trump’s War on Iran is widely opposed in the US. But not so among western leaders who’ve lined up to support our folly. All this, despite the massive blows to the global economy they will absorb, and the slapdash manner in which the war has been conducted.

Add to the erratic, ill-considered war strategy pursued by Trump and Netanyahu, this hare-brained scheme promoted by anonymous figures in the White House and Bibi Netanyahu.  It is a response to the “problem” besetting the US-Israel attack–that neither have either an endgame or a day-after plan.  Do they want to overthrow the Iranian government?  Do they want to replace it with internal figures?  If so, who will be the replacement?

Netanyahu has come up with the cracker-jack idea that the Kurds will solve all their problems, and he’s pitching like he’s the consummate dealmaker:

Netanyahu, who “has been relentless” in urging strikes on and regime change in Iran, first advocated for the Kurds in a White House meeting with Trump.

“When he first came over and sat with Trump for hours, you would have thought Netanyahu had it all figured out,” the official said.

“He had the successor planned out. He had the Kurds all figured out: Two sets of Kurdish groups here and there. This many people are going to rise up,” the official added.

…While U.S. policy-makers believe Netanyahu might have overestimated the number of Kurds who might take up arms against Iran, “it’s not nothing,” the official said.

That’s reassuring.

Trump is now knee deep in Bibi’s mess in the making. He’s making calls to Kurdish military leaders encouraging them to take up arms.  Trump, ever the consummate dealmaker. Who knows what he’s promising. But will the Kurds go for it? Remember, this is the same guy who betrayed the Kurds in Syria by withdrawing US troops at the start of his first term.

The plan is (puportedly) for Iraqi Kurds, who govern an autonomous region in northern Iraq and maintain a significant fighting force will, with the help of CIA supplies, weapons and presumably Israeli and US air support, sweep down from the north and defeat the IRG and any other resistance in their path:

A source within Komala, one of the biggest Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, said they had 15,000 to 20,000 fighters near the Iraqi-Iran border who could enter within days.

Once they are in control, Israel and the US will presumably install a puppet to run the place.  Since this is essentially Bibi’s plan, my money is on Shah 2.0, Reza Pahlevi to be the Chosen One.

Trump’s War is improvisation rather than strategy. It is a bunch of guys in the Situation Room saying: Oops, what do we do now? As a result, they put together a reckless plan that will fall apart if it ever leaves the drawing board.  The Kurdish Option is one part of it.

Despite the Kurds’ military prowess and CIA support, can they achieve this mission.  Probably not. Then what?

A coalition of Iranian Kurdish groups who oppose the regime say they are preparing to enter the war and have amassed thousands of fighters near the border with Iraq.

The Kurds are a large ethnic minority group that has long been seeking its own independent state in regions including Syria, Iran and Iraq.

Experts believe Kurdish ground forces alone are not enough to overthrow the Iranian regime, saying it would be a “suicide mission” without ground support from the United States.

That means boots on the ground. This is a contingency that virtually the entire GOP Congressional delegation has renounced. In fact, much of current Republican foreign policy is anchored by opposition to large-scale deployment of US troops on foreign soil. Apparently, Trump hasn’t read the memo. He is toying with an indefinite US military presence inside Iran. Fighting yet another endless war, for reasons few understand, and fighting foes who pose no serious threat to the US. in fact, today Trump boasted:

The United States Munitions Stockpiles have…never been higher…we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons,” Trump wrote. “Wars can be fought ‘forever‘…using just these supplies…

It is yet another slap in the face of his MAGA base, who didn’t vote for perpetual wars on foreign soil, and an imperial presidency full of global entanglements:

Trump has discussed the idea of deploying ground troops with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secure and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production similar to how the U.S. and Venezuela are, the sources said.

Kurdish populations are spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.  There is a precarious balance in each of those countries between the Kurdish population and the respective governments.  The least upset to that equilibrium could reverberate beyond an single country and sweep all of them into conflict.  The Kurdish option threatens to bleed the conflict outside Iran.

The Kurds have agitated and fought for their own independent state for decades.  These aspirations have been denied by dictators from Sadaam to Assad to Erdogan.  Now, Kurdish leaders may view this invitation as a means of reviving their national ambitions.  This in turn, could draw significant portions of the region into a brawl.

As for the current status of Kurdish involvement, 20,000 Kurdish troops is nowhere near enough to defeat Iranian forces numbering 1-million.  Nor are the current munitions they currently have. A Kurdish military official said: “They were armed with light weapons bought on the black market within Northern Iraq.”

Light weapons are no match for the IRG; even if Iranian forces are degraded significantly by the current round of air assaults. The Kurds would likely be slaughtered despite their undenied battlefield prowess.  That means a commitment of US troops to supplement the Kurds.  It means US weapons falling into the hands of Iranians, as they did to the Taliban in Afghanistan.  That means US boys coming home in body bags. That means a repeat of our invasion of Iraq in which 4,000 American soldiers died, while nearly 7,000 died in Afghanistan.  Do Americans have the stomach for that?

Here’s more of the “strategy” for the Kurdish rebellion:

…The idea would be for Kurdish armed forces to take on the Iranian security forces and pin them down to make it easier for unarmed Iranians in the major cities to turn out without getting massacred again as they were during unrest in January.

Sure, what could go wrong?

A regional expert panned the move:

“Instinctively, it feels like a bad move,” analyst Neil Quilliam of the United Kingdom-based think tank Chatham House told Al Jazeera of the plan, warning that it might cause more internal conflict in Iran.

“It is an afterthought and has not featured in any major planning to support any broader endgame. It reveals that the US-Iran war against Iran has been poorly thought out,” he said.

Alternatively, there may be a different plan afoot:

Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK, said…”It’s very difficult to envision using the Kurdish armed factions as a forward ground force [and] it’s very difficult to imagine that they would succeed in toppling the regime,” she said.

[But] the group could be used to press into western Iran and carve out a staging ground for Israeli and American forces that could be used for future attacks.

“I think what they are envisioning is to be able to create a Kurdish-controlled enclave in western Iran under air cover provided by the US and Israel,” she said.

“This would then provide a safe haven for attacks against regime targets inward in the internal territory of Iran.

Again, this means US boots on the ground. There’s simply no way around it.  What about nation-building and “forever wars?”  Terms Trump and Hegseth have denounced repeatedly.  We don’t want to bring democracy to the Middle East. We want to make war, finish the job and get out.  However, if they go this route of ongoing war and foreign occupation, it will be yet another pledge to the American people broken.

Similarly, the Republicans  (and their ADL allies) have taken to calling the war against Iran a “military operation.”  It’s a military operation like brain surgery is an outpatient procedure.  No amount of fudging and rhetorical hocus-pocus can obscure the truth.

The Kurds would do well to remember that the Americans have deserted them multiple times on the battlefield over the past sixty years:

• In 1971, when the US encourage an uprising against Sadaam, only to abandon to massive reprisals in which tens of thousands died.
• During the Iraq War in 1991, when the US encouraged another uprising, only to evaporate when Sadaam counter-attacked, leaving a trail of slaughter
• In 2016, at the outset of his first term, Trump honored his pledge to remove US troops from combat zones by withdrawing several thousand troops augmenting the Kurdish Peshmerga fighting against the Assad regime.  That left them at the mercy of their arch-enemy Turkey, which promptly invaded Syria and seized much of the territory the Kurds had held previously.

Do they really believe that Trump will stick with them to the end?  That he will be a trustworthy ally, in it for the long haul?  In fact, they would be fools to depend on a strategy that repeatedly failed in the past.  The US, and Trump in particular are fickle allies ready to turn their backs on the latter when their interest calls for it, without looking back or having an ounce of regret.

An airfield called Azerbaijan

In a separate alarming development, I reported in 2012 that Israel “bought an airfield called Azerbaijan.”  The former has long had corrupt dealings, billions in arms deals, and surveillance listening posts, with its dictator, Ilham Aliyev.  Back then, Israel was reported to have taken over an Azeri airfield near the border with Iran.  Its purpose was as a base for shipment of Israeli weapons from Israel to Azerbaijan.  Lately, it’s likely IAF warplanes and drones have used the bases to attack Iran.  It would give the Israelis a forward base much closer to the front than Israel itself.

That’s likely why Iran attacked the Nakhchivan Airport over the past few days, eliciting an angry response from Aliyev.  There is no reason in the midst of a war with Israel and the US that Iran would attack Azerbaijan, unless the latter was providing the Israeli air force a forward base for operations against Iran.

Every party, Israelis and Azeris, would be loathe to concede that Israel is using Azeri territory to attack Iran. It would be embarrassing to the nominally Muslim country to offer shelter to Iran’s enemies, while Israel would want to be careful not to embarrass its host.

The Iranian attack on Azerbaijan, along with multiple attacks on US assets in Gulf states, serve as a warning to them that America and Israel, despite all its sophisticated military hardware, can no longer guarantee their security. Cheap drones and ballistic missiles can outfox all those advanced air defenses, and at a fraction of the cost.