Has their time come at last? Knowing their unfortunate history of betrayal by the powers-that-be, that’s a question the answer to which is almost certainly no. Matt Broomfield at UnHerd:
Iran’s Kurds first declared autonomy back in 1946, but that Soviet-sponsored project was crushed by the regime of the young Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Western-backed Shah of Iran. Three decades later, Kurdish forces and protesters contributed to the nation-wide uprising which ousted the Shah in the 1979 revolution. But they were rapidly excluded as power centralised around the new Islamic order. A Kurdish bid for greater autonomy was bloodily crushed as over 1,000 Kurdish political activists were executed by the new regime, setting the scene for five more decades of repression.
Kurds have been systematically tortured, imprisoned and executed by the Iranian authorities, with Tehran hanging hundreds of Kurds in recent years. That’s amid a broader climate of cultural repression and economic exclusion. To eke out a living on the margins of Iranian society, thousands of Kurds have lost their lives working as illegal cross-border porters in the country’s rugged border regions….
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the exiled Shah who styles himself Iran’s new leader-in-waiting, has shown himself hostile to his Kurdish rivals in the Iranian opposition, even as he makes use of the Kurdish “Women, Life, Freedom” slogan to lobby for US support. Pahlavi dismissed the Kurdish opposition as “separatists” and collaborators with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein just this week, in comments slammed by the new Coalition as “hysterical and hateful”.
In any case, rather than Pahlavi Jr swooping in to take the reins after a lifetime in luxurious exile, the more likely outcome appears to be a takeover by elements in the Iranian security apparatus more amenable to US interests. Any such rump state would itself rely on authoritarian measures and a reformulated nationalist ideology to secure a chaotic post-conflict Iran, meaning there would be little reason for the Kurds to expect better treatment than under the deposed Islamic regime.
Not looking good, then. It never does for the Kurds. A reconstituted Islamist regime would continue the persecution, and it doesn’t look much better if Reza Pahlavi is parachuted in as the new Shah.
From the Jerusalem Post:
The Kurds would be taking a very significant gamble if Iranian Kurdish groups take up arms against the Islamic regime on behalf of the US, Washington-based Kurdish analyst and journalist Mutlu Civiroglu told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, adding that the risk carries a significant opportunity for the persecuted group to finally experience a level of rights and protection currently being denied by Tehran.
Civiroglu spoke with The Post after three informed sources told Reuters that Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the US in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country. While the sources said that a final decision has not been made about the potential agreement, the Kurdish groups have reportedly requested US military support, and there are reportedly ongoing talks that would see the CIA provide the militias with weapons.
Noting the US’s severing of ties with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic forces in Rojava, Civiroglu admitted that Kurdish trust in the Trump administration has somewhat faltered, though he himself did not view the situation in Syria as a sign of abandonment….
Beyond what many see as a recent betrayal, the reality for Kurds in the Islamic regime will likely only worsen if the US and Israel fail to secure regime change, he explained. It will be the Kurds who will pay the ultimate, deadliest price. It’s not hard to imagine their cities being crushed. They’re going to be executed if it fails,” he said, though added he had every faith in the operations succeeding.
“Iran cannot go back to a monarchy like the Pahlavi monarchy. That is one of the major reasons the people of Iran are in this situation,” he said, noting that every fragment of society had suffered under the current regime. “So that regime paved the way for the Islamic regime… after all this suffering, people cannot expect Iran to go back to the Islamic regime, or the monarchy. Iran has to have a democratic future. All of its ethnic and religious minorities should be able to freely express themselves. That’s why, for the new Iran, it has to be something that is pro-Western, something that treats diversity as a treasure, not as a threat, something that embraces all of its colors.”
It sounds, unfortunately, like a pipe-dream. But there’s still hope.
Mick Hartley 