Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan) has long been a core arena of Kurdish politics, even as the epicentre of mobilisation has shifted at different times to Iraq, Turkey or Syria. Many of the organisations active there today were founded before the Islamic Republic itself and have survived repeated waves of repression and exile. On 22 February 2026, five of the most prominent Iranian Kurdish parties (PDKI, PAK, PJAK, Khabat and Komala) announced the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, a new joint front. In their founding statement, they committed to working for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and to securing the Kurdish right to self-determination through a democratic political framework in Rojhelat. Shortly afterwards, US and Israeli airstrikes destroyed many military and security facilities across Iranian Kurdistan. For observers in and around Rojhelat, the timing looked far from accidental: the creation of a unified Kurdish front and the sudden weakening of state infrastructure were widely read as connected developments and expectations quickly grew that Kurdish forces might move to take control of key cities.
The reality on the ground is much less linear than common narratives suggest. Local reporting indicates that while airstrikes have severely damaged military and security infrastructure in several Kurdish towns, the Iranian regime has by no means “hollowed out”. Intelligence networks, local administrators and remaining security forces continue to function and the regime is still able to police daily life and movement. At the same time, the new Kurdish coalition has so far avoided a premature push to seize territory, aware that it lacks both a clear front line and firm international guarantees. Tehran has already responded as if a wider offensive were imminent, targeting the headquarters and camps of Iranian Kurdish parties inside the Kurdistan Region of Iraq with missiles and drones, signalling that any attempt to turn current disruption into de facto Kurdish control will be met with force.
Trump says Iranian Kurds should “rise up” and has even suggested the US should help shape who comes after the current leadership in Tehran. For Kurds, this kind of language is less an invitation than a warning. They have heard it before, and they know that once the cameras move on they are the ones left to deal with the consequences. This is why figures like Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed, Iraq’s Kurdish first lady, insist that “this is not our war” and resist being folded into Washington’s plans.
Iran is firing missiles and drones at several Gulf countries, Israel and even Cyprus, disrupting daily life and underlining that it still has options to escalate far beyond its own borders. Kurdistan has no air defence. Any open Kurdish alignment with a US-led campaign against Tehran would leave towns in both Rojhelat and the KRG exposed as easy targets. In that context, Trump’s repeated references to Kurds sound less like the start of a real Kurdish front and more like an attempt to create leverage on several tracks at once. Washington has little appetite for a ground war in Iran, not least because the Iranian mountainous territory is not conducive for infantry operations. Even sympathetic analysts describe a campaign built around airstrikes, sanctions and pressure, with vague end-goals and no clear plan for exit.
Talking up Kurdish militias at the presidential level and allowing US and Israeli outlets to run stories about ground offensives from the KRG into western Iran helps to signal that Iran’s western flank is permanently vulnerable – in the hope that an internal revolt will push Tehran towards a more Western approach in negotiations. At the same time, it puts extra pressure on Turkey: a US plan to arm Iranian Kurds is already described in the Turkish press as putting Erdoğan in an “impossible position” and Ankara is openly “closely following” PJAK and other groups. If three million Syrian Kurds living in disconnected enclaves were enough to unsettle Turkish foreign policy, the prospect of around ten million Kurds in a more connected and strategic part of Iran gaining ground is a nightmare scenario for Ankara. By overstating Kurdish dynamics, Washington can keep both Iran and Turkey off balance, while still hoping to deal with workable state elites in the region rather than owning the outcome of a full-scale collapse of the regime.
Looking wider, the war will damage primarily China, India and EU states, which receive most of their hydro-carbon requirements from the Gulf region. In 2025, Qatar only supplied 30% of China’s LNG import requirement, 45% of India and almost all of Pakistan’s oil requirements. The EU receive oil and gas products that account for over 75% of its imports from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, whereas the USA only 7% (EU-GCC Relations (2024)). The United States will remain virtually unscathed as it imports no substantial amounts of hydrocarbons from the region, although it will have to deal with imported inflation. This may be a blessing in disguise as this crisis may push investors to support the American dollar via the purchase of T-Bills assisting the United States to re-finance its twin deficits (fiscal and trade). That said, and with China one of Iran’s biggest oil customers, the current campaign against Tehran also has a wider dimension: it is a pre-emptive move to limit Chinese influence over energy and trade routes that run through the Gulf, the East Mediterranean and the wider region, while at the same time undermining Chinese industrial production.
In that picture, the Kurds risk being cast once more as useful fighters who are excluded when it comes to the negotiating table about the division of spoils. If they choose to work with Washington, they will need a much clearer plan than in the past for how their demands for autonomy fit into the American grand strategy. For Kurds, then, the issue is not simply whether this is a moment of opportunity, but what kind of opportunity it is. Political openings do emerge, but they rarely survive without strategy, leverage and regional realism. Rojhelat stands again at the centre of a wider struggle involving Iran, the US, Turkey and increasingly China. Kurds may well become an important factor in that struggle, but unless they can translate military relevance into political guarantees, they risk once more being treated as a tactical asset rather than a political agency with stakes in the geopolitics of the region.
Further Reading on E-International Relations
