Since the most recent war between Iran and its regional proxies on one side and Israel and the United States on the other, the Kurds have once again been pulled into the center of geopolitical calculations, often without any input from the Kurds themselves.
In this shifting strategic environment, Kurds in Iran and across the broader region have faced renewed pressure, suspicion, and in some cases collective punishment for dynamics they neither initiated nor controlled. At the outset of the US-Iran war, contradictory signals emerged from the White House regarding the Kurdish role in challenging the Ayatollah’s regime.
While Washington initially expressed rhetorical support for the Kurdish opposition, it later issued more cautious messages discouraging active Kurdish involvement in the conflict. Many analysts claimed that the potential for a Kurdish role was exaggerated, even accusing Kurdish forces of inflating their capacity and of misrepresenting both the internal structures of the Kurdish movement and political realities on the ground.
Yet, treating the Kurds as momentary tactical tools, they ignored a far more durable truth: that the Kurdish political experience in the Middle East is characterized by historical resilience, adaptive governance, and repeated reinvention under conditions of extreme constraint.
Despite intra-community political fragmentation, decades of repression across multiple states, and betrayal by external powers, the Kurds have consistently demonstrated stubborn fortitude. The Kurdish national movement in Iraq provides a striking example.
The 1975 Algiers Agreement shifted geopolitical alignments, halting external support for the movement and leading to its collapse. Nevertheless, it quickly reemerged to establish a de facto autonomous administration in the Kurdistan region of Iraq – despite Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign, which included the use of chemical weapons and mass atrocities and constitutes one of the most devastating chapters in Kurdish history.
After 2003, the Kurdish national movement also played a pivotal role in the reshaping of post-Saddam Iraq, participating in the formation of a federal system despite immense regional opposition and complex geopolitical constraints.
A similar pattern unfolded in Syria. Throughout decades of Ba’athist rule, Kurdish communities were systematically denied not only citizenship but even basic cultural recognition. When the Syrian civil war erupted, Kurdish forces initially lacked both institutional depth and material capacity compared to other armed factions.
Yet over time, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a Kurdish-led military coalition – became a key partner in the international campaign against ISIS, bearing significant responsibility in confronting one of the most violent transnational extremist groups of the modern era.
Moreover, the Kurds established mechanisms of self-governance that have provided order and a variety of services to a diverse local population.
Yet, shifting American priorities and persistent regional hostility – particularly from Turkey, along with allied jihadist proxies, but including also certain Arab tribes that sided with jihadist forces under the leadership of Ahmed al-Sharaa – have significantly constrained Kurdish capacity.
A historical look at Kurdish mobilization
As history has shown, however, Kurdish political organizations can evolve, stepping beyond the struggle for mere survival to become effective foundations for governance and security – both during wartime and within the chaotic political landscape of the Middle East that sometimes passes for peace.
It is against this backdrop that the Kurdish national movement inside Iran may be understood not as marginal actors judged by their current military capacities and sizes but as a dynamic political force.
External analysts often reduce the power of the Kurdish movement to a quantitative estimate of its current armed capacity, which is typically dismissed as a few thousand fighters based in border regions.
However, this approach is misleading. History indicates that, thanks to experience gained through sustained conflict with the ruling regime, Kurdish armed forces can increase tenfold, mobilizing diffuse tribal Kurdish networks and cross-border ties. Thus, their political influence has historically extended beyond the immediately visible.
This is clearly demonstrated by Kurdish mobilization in Rojava, other parts of the Kurdish homeland, and in the Kurdish diaspora.
Likewise, Iranian Kurdish political organizations – including the PDK-I, PJAK, PAK, and Komala factions – have recently increased efforts to coordinate and to articulate a more unified Kurdish platform focused on democratic reform, decentralization, and a federal restructuring of the Iranian state.
Thus, Kurdish mobilization, whether within Iran or in the diaspora, remains deeply woven into a broader social fabric that transcends military metrics in Iran and the Middle East.
Again, one of the persistent analytical errors in external discourse is the tendency to treat Kurdish movements as auxiliary instruments in a broader regional contest. This perspective, whether originating in Western capitals or among regional powers, entirely ignores both Kurdish national aspirations and the ongoing struggle to realize them.
The Kurdish national movement is neither a proxy force nor a passive actor. The Kurds, a collective comprising some 50 million people, have persisted in their fight to meet both national and civic objectives in countries that have colonized their homelands, outlawed their culture and their languages, and committed brutal atrocities against them.
The potential Kurdish role in efforts to redefine Iran should be evaluated in light of this tenacity – not only in terms of their visible military capacities. Kurdish movements in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran have demonstrated, time and time again, the ability to survive in circumstances that would have demoralized and destroyed any weaker populations.
A small spark of hope has the potential to ignite mass mobilization across economic, military, and political spheres.
While their resilience alone does not guarantee success, Kurdish mobilization promises to leave a profound imprint on the geopolitical trajectory of the Middle East. Therefore, the Kurds are not peripheral to Middle Eastern politics but central to the transformation and future stability of the region.
Any future regional order in which this reality is ignored will simply reproduce the old threats that have defined the past century.
Therefore, regional and global powers engaged in the political transformation of the Middle Eastern order should recognize that the Kurds – one of the Middle East’s most persistent and adaptive political forces – are not merely a tool to be used by others but dynamic political actors with agendas of their own.
The writer is a researcher of the Kurdish Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. X: @dagweysi