Above photo: Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in an undisclosed location. Kurdistan Freedom Party X account.
The president held a call with Kurdish leaders based in Iraq on Sunday.
President Trump is open to backing militant groups who are willing to fight the Iranian government, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Among the groups Trump is considering supporting are Kurdish forces based in Iraq, who have thousands of troops along the Iran-Iraq border, an idea first raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a White House meeting with the president, according to a US official speaking to Axios.
“When he first came over and sat with Trump for hours, you would have thought Netanyahu had it all figured out,” the official said. “He had the successor planned out. He had the Kurds all figured out: Two sets of Kurdish groups here and there. This many people are going to rise up.”
The Axios report said that Trump spoke with the leaders of the two main Kurdish factions in Iraq, which was confirmed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is based in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the US maintains a military presence.
The UK’s ITV News reported on Tuesday that “since last year, weapons have been smuggled into Western Iran to arm thousands of Kurdish volunteers. They are expected to begin a ground operation within days.” The outlet cited Kurdish sources who said the US and Israel have been asked to provide air support when the operations begin.
CNN later reported that the CIA was working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran.
During the protests in Iran in January, reports said that Kurdish fighters from Iraq were entering Iran and clashing with Iranian forces. The Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, a Kurdish Iranian separatist group mainly based in Iraq, was claiming that its armed wing was fighting against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
