An Iraqi Kurdish delegation said they are hearing “more and more understanding” of Kurdish aspirations for greater sovereignty in the aftermath of the radical Sunni Arab seizure of much of western Iraq.

Speaking on July 2 before a packed audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the external relations department of the KRG, said the Kurdish administration would not rush toward outright independence — which is still officially opposed by the United States and Iraq’s neighbors — but would no longer accept restrictions imposed by the Baghdad government.

The KRG, which recently began exporting oil via Turkey, and sold a tanker to Israel, is demanding that Baghdad acknowledge its right to sell oil produced in the region. The Kurds also intend to hold on to Kirkuk and other disputed areas that their peshmerga forces have seized since the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) captured Mosul on June 9.

“Pre- and post-Mosul, we are a different country,” Hussein said. Iraq, he said, was already partitioned into three states: an Islamist state, a democratic Kurdistan and a “failed government” in Baghdad.