Why Washington’s Kurdish gambit could backfire in Iran

The Trump administration should abandon any plans to arm Iranian Kurdish forces before the first fighter crosses the Iraqi-Iranian border. Not refine it. Not sequence it more carefully. Drop it entirely. The operation will not topple the Iranian regime, will inflame the Persian nationalism that is the Islamic Republic’s most reliable reserve fuel, and — most damagingly — will hand Tehran a coalition-fracturing tool it did not have to build. There is no version of this gambit that serves American strategic interests.

The case for the Kurdish option rests on seductive logic: Iran is multi-ethnic, Kurdish grievances run deep, and armed groups are already positioned along the border. Why not give them a push? Because the push produces exactly the wrong results, on three simultaneous tracks — internally, externally, and strategically — and understanding why requires taking seriously what political scientists know about how governments respond to ethnic challenges, and what Iran’s neighbors are already signaling.

Leftist opponents of the 1979 revolution tried something similar. It was a disaster. These groups tried to counter the nascent Islamic revolution by supporting ethnic uprisings, especially among Kurds in western Iran. Instead of bringing the revolution to a close, the leftist opponents of Ruhollah Khomeini rallied his once-fractious ranks and solidified the standing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Kurdish gambit risks producing the opposite of its intended effect — internally by handing the regime’s hardliners a nationalist rallying cry, and externally by spreading secessionist anxiety through every multi-ethnic state on Iran’s periphery. Taken together, these dynamics constitute something closer to a strategic gift to Tehran than a knockout blow.

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