With Iran under heavy bombardment and its leaders being targeted in the widening US and Israeli campaign, attention is shifting to the nation’s ethnic minorities and the role they could play amid a destabilized Iranian central state.

Axios reported on Tuesday that President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Kurdish leaders in Iraq, including Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, shortly after the US-Israeli bombing campaign began on Saturday. According to the Axios report, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for engagement with the Iranian Kurds, who are seen as a potentially significant anti-Tehran force.

While Iranian law grants formal equality to all ethnic groups, in practice, minorities have long endured systemic repression. Amnesty International’s 2024 report on Iran found that ethnic minorities and migrants face widespread human rights abuses, including discrimination in education, employment, housing and political representation. Persistent underinvestment in regions where these groups live has worsened poverty and social marginalization, and the death penalty continues to be applied disproportionately against them. 

The war launched by the US and Israel on Friday represents a radical disruption to Iran’s power structure, creating openings that minority groups could use to press for political ambitions.