The Central Intelligence Agency is working to arm Kurdish opposition forces along the Iraq-Iran border with the goal of sparking a popular uprising inside Iran, according to multiple reports from CNN, Reuters, and the Financial Times citing U.S., Kurdish, and regional officials.
The plan — still reportedly awaiting a final green light — would turn an already catastrophic air war into something far more dangerous: a CIA-backed proxy ground operation designed to fracture Iran from the inside, using a people Washington has armed, used, and abandoned before.
What We Know
The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian Kurdish opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing military support.
According to CNN, CIA involvement with some of these groups began months before the bombing campaign started on February 28.
The armed Kurdish groups at the center of the plan number in the thousands and operate primarily in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, along the Iran-Iraq border.
Five major Iranian Kurdish opposition parties recently formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, pledging unified resistance against Tehran.
President Trump himself has been making calls.
On Sunday, he spoke with Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Bafel Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — the two most powerful Iraqi Kurdish leaders.
On Tuesday, he spoke with Mustafa Hijri, president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, one of the groups already being targeted by Iranian drone strikes.
A senior Iranian Kurdish official told CNN that opposition forces expect to participate in a ground operation in western Iran “in the coming days,” though a final decision on timing has not been confirmed.
“It’s very dangerous, but what can we do? We cannot stand against America. We are very frightened.”
The source said Kurdish fighters are expecting U.S. and Israeli support.
The Strategy — and its Assumptions
The logic behind the plan hinges on a few interconnected goals, none of which come with guarantees.
First, the idea is for Kurdish armed forces to engage Iran’s security apparatus in the country’s western provinces, pinning down IRGC and police forces along the border.
This would theoretically make it safer for unarmed Iranian civilians in major cities to take to the streets without facing the kind of mass killing that left thousands dead when protests erupted in January.
Second, U.S. officials have discussed the possibility of Kurdish forces seizing and holding territory in northern Iran, potentially creating a buffer zone that would benefit Israel.
Third, Israeli forces have already been striking Iranian military and police outposts along the Iraq-Iran border in recent days — targeting border posts, police stations, and Basij militia facilities in Kurdish-majority cities like Paveh and Sanandaj.
Sources told CNN these strikes are intended to clear the way for Kurdish fighters to cross into Iran.
The human rights organization Hengaw reported that hundreds of Iranian security personnel have already been killed in these Kurdish regions, a figure it says may be underreported.
The Risks Nobody Wants to Talk About
U.S. intelligence assessments have consistently concluded that Iranian Kurdish groups lack the influence and resources to mount a successful uprising against the regime on their own.
That’s a damning admission from the same government now pushing those groups toward exactly that.
Kurdish leaders know this too.
Multiple sources say they are seeking political guarantees from the Trump administration before committing to any operation — guarantees that, given this administration’s track record, are worth about as much as the paper they’re not written on.
A former senior State Department official who served under Biden told CNN that the implications of arming the Kurds have not been fully thought through.
“We are already facing a volatile security situation, on both sides of the border,” said Jen Gavito.
“This has the potential to undermine Iraqi sovereignty and essentially empower armed militias with no accountability and with little understanding of what it may set in motion.”
Neil Quilliam of the UK-based think tank Chatham House was blunter, telling Al Jazeera that the plan is “an afterthought” that “has not featured in any major planning to support any broader endgame.”
He warned it could fuel infighting among opposition groups rather than unite them against the regime.
Then there’s the regional fallout.
A Kurdish uprising in Iran could energize the Baluch separatist movement in Iran’s southeast — a conflict that would almost certainly spill into Pakistan’s already volatile Baluchistan province.
Islamabad would not sit quietly.
And Turkey is watching all of this with deep alarm. Ankara considers Kurdish armed groups — particularly those linked to the PKK — to be existential threats.
Some of the groups the U.S. is reportedly courting, including the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), are designated as terrorist organizations by Turkey.
Arming Kurdish fighters this close to Turkish borders risks weapons flowing to PKK-linked groups, could prompt Turkey to block NATO cooperation on the broader Iran operation, and might push Ankara closer to Russia and what remains of the Iranian state.
Iraq’s national security adviser Qasim al-Araji issued a statement Wednesday making Baghdad’s position clear: Iraq will not allow groups to cross its border with Iran to carry out attacks from Iraqi territory.
How much control Baghdad actually has over what happens in the Kurdistan region is another question entirely.
A Pattern America Keeps Repeating
The United States has armed Kurdish fighters before.
It armed them in Iraq during the war that began in 2003.
It armed them in Syria to fight ISIS.
In both cases, once the immediate U.S. objective was achieved, the Kurds found themselves expendable.
When Trump pulled U.S. forces from northern Syria during his first term, Kurdish allies were left to face a Turkish military assault.
His own Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, resigned over what he saw as an unforgivable abandonment.
Just last month, when Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa moved to dismantle Kurdish autonomous governance in northeastern Syria, the U.S. not only didn’t stop it — it encouraged the deal.
Kurdish officials are painfully aware of this history.
A senior Kurdistan Regional Government official told CNN that part of the problem is that “one day Trump says we will overthrow the regime, the next day he says something different. The policy is not clear.”
(American people: “Welcome to our world.”)
Another senior KRG official captured the impossible position the Kurds are in: “It’s very dangerous, but what can we do? We cannot stand against America. We are very frightened.”
What This Really is
Strip away the strategic language and what remains is a familiar American playbook: arm a vulnerable population, point them at a regime the U.S. wants gone, promise support that may or may not materialize, and walk away when the cost gets too high.
The CIA’s track record with proxy insurgencies speaks for itself.
Afghanistan’s mujahideen became al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Libya’s rebels created a failed state.
The Syrian opposition fractured into warring factions while civilians paid the price.
Now the administration wants to do it again — this time with Kurdish fighters who have every reason to distrust Washington, against a regime whose security forces just demonstrated in January that they will kill thousands of their own people to stay in power, in a region where every neighboring country has reasons to intervene if things spiral.
The people who will bear the consequences of this plan are not in the Oval Office or at CIA headquarters.
They are Kurdish families in the mountains along the border, and Iranian civilians in cities that have already been bombed for days.
They are the ones who will be caught between a regime fighting for survival and an American strategy that treats their lives as acceptable collateral in someone else’s war.
