Amid his country’s unprecedented assault on Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu deployed the rhetorical big guns too. As the bombs fell, the Israeli premier called on the citizens of the Islamic Republic to “stand up” and let their voices be heard — before switching to Persian. “Woman, Life, Freedom,” Netanyahu proclaimed. “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.” Now a common rallying-cry among Iran’s exiled opposition, the feminist slogan has unexpected roots, coined by militants in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which at one time actually fought against Israel. The slogan’s torturous journey from radical anti-Zionism to attempted Zionist propaganda perfectly illustrates the complex challenges and limited options faced by Iran’s long-suffering Kurds.
As the most organised and militant opposition within Iran, the Kurds might dream of forging a coalition with the country’s other minorities and playing a determinant role in any future civil conflict, just like their Syrian Kurdish counterparts during that country’s civil war. More pragmatically, they recognise that continued Israeli attacks will only bring fresh hardship to their long-suffering people, who are now being targeted by the Islamic regime even as Israel seeks to exploit their cause. This impasse was underscored during Israel’s bombing campaign, as IDF airstrikes hit a hospital in Iran’s largest Kurdish-majority city, while Iran executed three Kurdish men as part of a wider crackdown.
Iran’s Kurds are long used to losing out when great powers clash. The Kurdish and Persian languages have common roots, and the two peoples’ histories are deeply entwined. Iran’s foundational Safavid order even has its roots in a mystic, millenarian Kurdish Sufi order. Thereafter, wherever Kurdish principalities and vassal states bubbled up, they were overrun, as the Ottomans and Persians engaged in scorched-earth battles across their territory.
More recently, the first modern, independent Kurdish polity was established by Iranian Kurds. But the Soviet-sponsored Republic of Mahabad was soon abandoned by Moscow, then crushed by the Western-backed Shah.
This betrayal set the tone for subsequent decades. The 1979 Islamic Revolution brought no respite to the Kurds, who had generally backed the overthrow of the Shah’s repressive apparatus but soon launched their own insurgency to oppose the new, Islamist regime. Thousands of them were killed and 1,200 political prisoners were executed as forces loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini once again suppressed their bid for sovereignty.
During the brutal trench combat of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran backed Iraqi Kurds and Baghdad backed Iranian Kurds, each side then taking revenge on their domestic Kurdish populations. Iran kept executing Kurds, while Iraqi Kurdistan suffered the Anfal genocide perpetrated by Saddam Hussein, and marked by the use of chemical weapons. Once again, neither East nor West was interested in alleviating Kurdish suffering — except insofar as it could be exploited to suit other regional agendas.
Given these limitations, Iran’s complex constellation of Leftist and nationalist Kurdish opposition forces have unsurprisingly been driven into exile. The PKK itself has long had an ambiguous relationship with Tehran, generally preferring to concentrate its firepower on Turkey, even if its affiliates have fought a waning battle against Iranian forces. Iran’s strong repressive apparatus means there’s presently little room for any of these parties to manoeuvre.
Meanwhile, the Kurdish political movement is not only exiled and fragmented, but also isolated within Iran itself. This vast, diverse country is also home to tens of millions of Turkic-speaking Azeris, plus a restive Baloch population on the Pakistani border, and an Arab minority at the strategic chokepoint where Iran, Iraq and Kuwait meet the Persian Gulf. These groups have distinct agendas and ideologies and have historically struggled to forge meaningful links — regardless of their shared experiences of repression.
Compared to the darkest days of the Eighties, the current situation is nonetheless slightly improved. Iran recognises Kurdish as a regional language, with the country’s Kurdish-speaking President Masoud Pezeshkian recently addressing Kurds in their mother tongue. Reformist politicians are now apt to make (generally unfulfilled) overtures towards the Iranian Kurds. But for the most part, they still suffer discrimination, poverty, and brutal repression. Many eke out a living as illegal porters, labouring across the inhospitable mountains dividing Iranian Kurdistan from Turkey, carrying smuggled goods on their backs. Otherwise, little escapes the region save grainy clips of abuse by the Revolutionary Guards and Guidance Patrol, better known as the morality police.
Given this long-term repression, many Iranian Kurds would welcome a change of government, potentially even one brought about by Israeli intervention. But past and present experience suggest that Israeli exploitation is unlikely to further the Kurdish cause. With Israel’s “12-Day War” on Iran apparently over, at least for the moment, the question now is what role Iran’s Kurds will play in future phases of the conflict.
Despite the challenges they face, Iranian Kurdish armed groups are the country’s strongest opposition. In their statement responding to Israel’s strikes, the PKK’s Iranian affiliates somewhat hopefully envisage a rejuvenated “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement, backed by a rainbow coalition of women, minority movements and pro-democratic forces. Meanwhile, a recent détente between the PKK and Turkey could pave the way for a surge of manpower and matériel to the PKK’s Iranian affiliates, even as the PKK remains included on global terror lists and is unlikely to pursue Western policy goals. A smaller, less radical Iranian Kurdish group called Komala is busy in Washington, openly touting for military aid by promising a “nuclear-free Iran”. It’s therefore possible to imagine a future in which Tehran’s grip on power slackens and diverse Kurdish forces overcome ideological differences to establish de facto autonomy in their home regions.
But this scenario remains an outside possibility. As demonstrated by the ongoing crackdown, which has seen Tehran arrest hundreds of people in Kurdish regions and throughout Iran, Israel’s assault is more likely to entrench the militarisation and centralisation of Iranian society. Any path towards a reformed Iran will be long and bloody, and it’s difficult to imagine how any such domestic movement could avoid being exploited or fractured by the sponsorship of foreign powers. Notably, Turkey would likely benefit from any such breakdown to enter the Iranian arena as a sponsor of the Azeri population, to the inevitable detriment of the Kurds. For its part, Israel has long sought to find individual Kurdish leaders or groups to exploit as part of its so-called “periphery doctrine”, forging alliances and proxy relationships with non-Muslims and non-Arabs excluded from Middle Eastern politics.
To be fair, there is a significant degree of sympathy for both the US and Israel on the Kurdish street. But even less ideologically motivated Iraqi Kurdish leaders, who have long benefited from a steady oil trade through Turkey to Israel, have condemned Israel’s latest round of strikes. They recognise that Netanyahu’s rhetorical manipulation of the Kurdish cause endangers Kurds, aligning them with Israeli interests and further isolating the minority from their neighbours throughout the Muslim world. The Kurds are thus transformed into low-hanging fruit, enabling Iran to claim victorious “retaliation” against Israel by striking random Iraqi Kurdish targets and executing Kurdish political prisoners on spurious, unproven claims of Mossad links.
As for the Kurds themselves, anti-imperialist and Islamic solidarity, plus shared experiences of genocide, inspire sympathy with Palestinians. The PKK itself began life training with Palestinian militants in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, and remains vocally opposed to Nato imperialism and Israeli settler colonialism. As Israeli bombs fell around Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, the female Kurdish political prisoners detained there released an open letter calling for an end to the assault and warning that “foreign powers” could not bring liberation to their people.
“There is a significant degree of sympathy for both the US and Israel on the Kurdish street.”
This explains why many Kurds are angered by Netanyahu’s appropriation of the originally-Kurdish “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan. The phrase became a famous rallying-cry for Kurdish-led anti-regime protests after Iran’s morality police killed a young Kurdish woman following an alleged hijab infraction. It then spread around the world in a campaign backed by Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, divorced from its radical roots and adopted by the conservative, nationalistic, anti-Kurdish mainstream of the Iranian opposition.
None of this helped Kurdish protesters, who were executed in their hundreds. On the contrary, Netanyahu’s lip-service only endangered the Kurds by enabling Iranian authorities to present any and all Kurdish opposition as Israeli stooges. Rather than suggesting any forthcoming material support, Netanyahu’s latest speech is the Iranian edition of an Israeli tactic long familiar from Turkey and Syria — using rhetorical appeals over the Kurds to deflect criticism of Israel’s own, genocidal war in Gaza.
For now, exiled Kurdish militants continue to mull their options in the event of full-scale war, while urging a path beyond both Israel’s genocidal war and Iran’s repressive regime. Between retributive Iranian violence on the one hand, and cynical exploitation by Israel on the other, that path may prove hard to find.
In another twist to the 20th-century tale of foreign exploitation, Henry Kissinger once plotted a Kurdish uprising against Saddam in cahoots with the Iranian Shah, only to cancel the operation and abandon America’s Kurdish allies once more. In Kissinger’s own telling, the Kurds had to recognise that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work”. As great-power conflict continues to rage across their homeland, the Kurds forget this ugly, realist lesson at their peril.
