US in talks with Iranian Kurds for CIA-backed uprising: Report

WASHINGTON

The U.S. intelligence is preparing a plan to supply Kurdish forces in Iran with weapons in an effort to spark an uprising against the Iranian regime, CNN has reported.

According to the sources speaking to CNN, the Trump administration has been holding talks with Iranian opposition factions as well as Kurdish leaders in Iraq about the possibility of offering military assistance.

Iranian Kurdish armed factions, numbering in the thousands, operate along the Iraq-Iran border, largely within Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Since the conflict began, a number of these groups have issued public statements suggesting imminent action and calling on Iranian troops to defect.

A Kurdish source told CNN that Iranian Kurdish opposition forces are likely to join a ground offensive in western Iran in the coming days.

“We believe the moment presents a significant opportunity,” the source said, adding that the militias anticipate backing from both the United States and Israel.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched drone strikes against Kurdish positions, saying on March 3 that dozens of drones were used to target Kurdish fighters.

Axios earlier reported that U.S. President Donald Trump held phone talks with two of Iraq’s leading Kurdish figures, Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Bafel Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), on March 1 to discuss the ongoing U.S.-Israel confrontation with Iran and potential coordination.

Any plan to arm Iranian Kurdish groups would require cooperation from Iraqi Kurdish authorities to allow weapons to transit through their territory and potentially use Iraqi Kurdistan as a staging ground.

One person briefed on the discussions said the concept envisions Kurdish fighters engaging Iranian security forces to tie them down, thereby creating space for unarmed civilians in major cities to protest without facing the kind of deadly crackdowns seen during unrest in January.

Another U.S. official suggested that Kurdish involvement could destabilize the region further and strain Tehran’s military capacity.

Other strategists have even floated the idea that Kurdish forces might seize and hold territory in northern Iran, potentially establishing a buffer zone that could benefit Israel’s security posture.