US-backed Kurdish forces poised to enter Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan 'within days'

An alliance of six Iranian Kurdish groups backed by the United States is preparing to enter Iran to join in the US-Israeli campaign to dislodge the Iranian regime, despite threats from Iran and growing opposition from regional heavyweight Turkey, well-placed sources told Al-Monitor.

The sources declined to provide a date but said the Iranian Kurdish forces, which had been supplied with weapons and other equipment, could cross “within days.”

The move has been widely anticipated since Sunday, when President Donald Trump called Iraqi Kurdish leaders Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani to discuss the matter. The sources said the State Department had not been informed about the calls in advance.

The sources briefing Al-Monitor revealed that Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the senior-most figure in Iraqi Kurdistan, was — despite misgivings — no longer opposed to the plan, which is meant to result in the armed Iranian Kurdish groups taking charge of Kurdish-majority areas across the border. Even if the Iraqi Kurdish leaders had wanted to, they would likely have been unable to withstand US pressure to facilitate the infiltration operation. Their own forces will not be involved in the fighting inside Iran, the sources said.

More broadly, the operation aims to accelerate the collapse of Iran’s clerical regime by stretching its already beleaguered forces and encouraging other ethnic minorities to rise up against it as well, including the Baloch and the Azeris. 

US and Israeli forces have been heavily bombing those areas since Sunday, ostensibly to prepare the ground for Iranian Kurdish fighters. The armed groups are expected to cross via the KDP-controlled area of Haj Omran and further south near the Bashmaq border crossing in Sulaimaniyah, which is controlled by Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth downplayed the role of Kurdish fighters at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, saying, “None of our objectives are premised on the support of the arming of any particular force.” He added, “What other entities may be doing, we're aware of, but our objectives aren't centered on that.”

The White House on Wednesday afternoon denied that Trump had approved any plans to arm Kurdish fighters to fight in Iran.

“Any report suggesting that the president has agreed to any such plan is completely false,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“The United States broadcasting an operation that is traditionally covert — this could be a setup, used to stir paranoia in Tehran and provoke a harsh repressive crackdown in northwestern Iran,” Ramzy Mardini, the founder of Geopol Labs, a Middle East-based risk advisory firm, told Al-Monitor. “The brutal response and images would erode the regime’s legitimacy and help shape international public opinion. It’s a half-baked and hastily conceived idea. There is no compelling evidence — or comparative case — to point to where a couple thousand armed rebels can overrun or upend an entrenched regime with a highly organized coercive apparatus, Mardini contended.

Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador and longtime advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), concurred. The Iranian Kurds should be wary of US promises. Trump is a serial betrayer of America’s Kurdish allies, permitting an Iranian-backed militia to use US tanks against the Iraqi Kurds in 2017, giving Turkey a green light to attack the Syrian Kurds in 2019 and facilitating the Syrian regime’s seizure of most of Kurdish-controlled Syrian territory in 2026.

The sources said that the CIA has been in contact with Iranian Kurdish armed groups about possible infiltration operations inside Iran since last year. Israel has pressed for such support since its June 2025 war with Iran, advocating for Kurdish engagement against Tehran’s regime.

On Wednesday, US and Israeli jets struck the city of Piranshahr that lies across from Haj Omran and Baneh that lies across from Sulaimaniyah. The sources said that regime forces, including members of the Basij and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, were now embedding in schools and hospitals, in a repeat of Hamas’ tactics in Gaza.

The venture is filled with risks and could easily backfire, not least if Trump cuts a last-minute deal with the Iranian regime as the war enters its fifth day. More than 1,000 people have died since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran, killing many of its top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. 

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called Masrour Barzani, the prime minister in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Masoud’s son. A readout of the call issued by the KRG said the pair had “discussed the situation in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, as well as broader regional developments and conflict.” Fidan will have likely cautioned the younger Barzani against letting Iranian Kurdish groups use Iraq's Kurdistan region as a rear base for its operations inside Iran.

Turkey is particularly spooked by the inclusion of one of the armed groups in the recently formed alliance —  called the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan — namely the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK. PJAK was established by another Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been waging an armed campaign against the Turkish army since 1984. 

The PKK declared last year that it had abandoned the fight and was disarming and dissolving itself in line with its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan’s calls. Ocalan is in talks with Turkey to definitively end the 40-year-long insurgency. However, the disarmament process has not begun and some of the rebels could melt into PJAK, sowing the seeds of yet another Kurdish proto-state on Turkey’s borders.

Iran is also cranking up threats and pressure on the Iraqi Kurds. The IRGC said on Wednesday that it had fired 230 drones at several facilities hosting US troops in the Middle East, including one in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region. A building in Sulaimaniyah was hit by a drone strike on Tuesday evening. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi called Talabani on Wednesday. According to the PUK’s official media outlet, Aragchi thanked Talabani for “his active role in preserving stability in Iraq and in the Kurdistan Region, commending the PUK’s constructive and peaceful role in the region.”

In a post on X, Talabani’s younger brother, Qubad, who is deputy prime minister in the KRG, said the Kurdistan Region of Iraq was “not a part of the regional conflict and remained committed to neutrality.” Iran is unlikely to see things as he described should Iraqi Kurdistan effectively become a rear base for a Kurdish insurgency inside its borders. 

This developing story has been updated.