Although Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani may have thought the fall of Kirkuk to Iraqi government forces meant going back to the pre-2014 lines — when the Iraqi army collapsed and evacuated Kirkuk, and Kurds imposed their control on some of the "disputed territories" — this is not true.

In fact, before the Kurdish independence referendum on Sept. 25, I had voiced concern to Voice of America that Kurds may face a disastrous situation reminiscent of that fateful year, 1975.

In 1975, the uprising led by Kurdish national icon Molla Mustafa Barzani (Massoud's father) collapsed when Iran, then ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, withdrew support from the Kurds as part of the Algiers Accord with Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. As a result, thousands of Kurdish fighters and their families fled to Iran. The elder Barzani was then hospitalized in Washington, where he died in sorrow.

Soon, the vanguard of the "Kurdish Revolution," the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), split, and the breakaway leftist faction led by the late Jalal Talabani founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The Kurdish political movement fell into disarray and could recover only years later, mainly thanks to a long and extremely bloody war between Iran and Iraq, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.