Iran's Dissident Kurds Seek US Help to Overthrow Government

Newsweek

a day ago

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The head of a dissident Iranian Kurdish movement has told Newsweek his group is urging the United States to foster contacts with opposition factions in the Islamic Republic to undermine and ultimately overthrow the government.
"We think that the administration should have an open-door policy with the Democratic opposition to the Iranian regime, like Kurdish people, like different ethnic minorities, different ethnic political groups, providing they are not terrorists, providing they are not undemocratic," Abdullah Mohtadi, secretary-general of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, told Newsweek.
"We think it is in the best national the United States to have a direct dialogue with the different components of the Iranian opposition," he added, "because if the United States has ties with them, the regime might collapse under pressure from domestic crises."
And while some critics of Iran voice opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to strike a nuclear agreement with Tehran, Mohtadi felt a deal that restricted the Islamic Republic's nuclear program would only further serve to impair, rather than empower, the government.
"We stand for a non-nuclear Iran, like the Trump administration does," Mohtadi said. "We also share the administration's policy of countering Iran's malign activity in the region. In my opinion, a deal based on these points does not strengthen the regime. In fact, it weakens it."
Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan Secretary-General Abdullah Mohtadi speaks during the group's 16th congress, held in November 2024, in Denmark.
Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan Secretary-General Abdullah Mohtadi speaks during the group's 16th congress, held in November 2024, in Denmark.
Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan
The Kurdish Struggle in Iran
Iran is a diverse nation comprising a variety of ethnic communities, the largest of which is the Persian community. Other sizable groups include Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Lurs and Balochis.
Kurds, often considered the world's largest stateless people, primarily inhabit territory spanning Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, with Iranian Kurds mostly present in the northwestern provinces of West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam and parts of Hamadan and Lorestan.
Kurds are estimated to comprise around 10 percent of the Iranian population, constituting approximately 8–12 million people. They are largely Sunni Muslim, while the vast majority of Iranians adhere to Shiite Islam.
As is the case with the other three countries in which substantial Kurdish populations reside, Iran has a troubled history with its Kurdish minority, some of whom have accused the ruling governments of suppressing their rights dating back centuries and some of whom have resorted to force to challenge authorities.
Kurdish groups have also been used as proxies in rivalries between regional powers, both during and after Iran's monarchist era that ended with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. During the 1980s Iran-Iraq War that ensued, Kurdish factions on both sides fought against their respective governments.
Komala emerged as one of the leading Kurdish armed groups, adopting a Marxist-Leninist outlook, to challenge the newly formed Islamic Republic. The party has operated largely underground, establishing networks both within the country and abroad.
The group has also splintered several times, with Mohtadi's faction splitting from the Communist Party wing in 2000. For more than a decade, Mohtadi has sought to foster U.S. contacts and in 2018, under the first Trump administration, Komala opened its first office in Washington, D.C.
Other leading Kurdish movements in Iran include the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK). Like Komala, these groups have been engaged in clashes with Iranian security personnel, including deadly incidents that have taken place in recent years.
All three parties are designated terrorist organizations by the Iranian government, and Komala is also viewed as a terrorist organization.
A representative of PDKI declined to comment to Newsweek. Newsweek has also reached out to PJAK, the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, and the U.S. Department of State for comment.
After Mohtadi previously appealed for U.S. support during an October 2022 interview with Newsweek, the Iranian Mission reiterated that the "Komala Party is identified as an active terrorist group that has martyred hundreds of people in Mahabad and other cities in Iran."
"If the US administration is committed to fighting terrorism, there should not be any adequate means and facilities for political activities and meetings at the disposal of this group," the Iranian Mission told Newsweek at the time.
Mohtadi emphasized, however, that he no longer views armed resistance as the most viable path toward achieving Komala's aims in Iran, noting the recent disbanding of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in its decades-long insurgency against Turkey.
"Kurds have been struggling for their rights for decades, hundreds of years," Mohtadi said. But I believe that the era of armed struggle, or getting victory through armed struggle, is over, and the PKK disarmament is a kind of [an] example for that."
"Our success in organizing general strikes and in organizing the mass movements during the Jina revolution also is a testament to that effect," he added.
The Jina movement refers to the large-scale protests under the banner of "Women, Life, Freedom" that erupted across Iran in response to the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina, or Zhina, Amini, while in police custody in September 2022.
Activists have accused Iranian authorities of killing Amini after her detention on charges of failing to adhere to the country's dress code. Iranian officials have rejected this narrative, pointing to an investigation that allegedly showed she died of natural causes.
Her cousin, a member of Komala's communist faction, has denied that she had any ties to Kurdish opposition groups.
Mohtadi said Komala has played a leading role in promoting Kurdish opposition efforts through the protest movement, organizing strikes and other forms of civil disobedience. In doing so, he said, he has allied with PDKI, though he rejected the continued practice of attacking Iranian personnel as carried out by PJAK, which was most recently tied to the killing of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldier in October.
"As far as far as the civil movements are concerned, I think they are more effective than Kalashnikovs now," Mohtadi said, "and the Jina movement, the Woman, Life Freedom movement, proved it."
Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by Iranian police, in Tehran, on October 1, 2022.
Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by Iranian police, in Tehran, on October 1, 2022.
AP/Middle East Images
A State Within A State
Through the Women, Life, Freedom movement, Mohtadi said Komala is "seeking and actively fighting for a Kurdish united front inside Iranian Kurdistan." He said this effort includes reinvigorating young Iranian Kurds to take action on the streets.
The large-scale protests and unrest that emerged after Amini's death drew international attention to both women's rights and Kurdish rights in Iran, while drawing domestic outrage toward hardliners in the government. Some took their hopes for change to the ballots.
Last August, following the death of principalist President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who hails from Azeri-Turkish roots, won a snap election on a platform that included promoting the rights of ethnic minorities, including Kurds.
Pezeshkian appointed the first Sunni Kurdish governor of the Kurdistan province in 45 years and chose the semiautonomous Kurdish region of neighboring Iraq as his first foreign visit.
However, Mohtadi envisions more comprehensive measures that would grant Kurds greater self-rule within Iran, similar to Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). Both quasi-states were established with direct support from Washington in the wake of the Gulf War and the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, respectively.
"We do not copy their model, but generally speaking, yes, we are for a federal Iran," Mohtadi said, "as my party and my people in Iranian Kurdistan supports a federal, democratic political structure in the future of Iran, which means that people have a say in running their own affairs in the Kurdish regions."
He affirmed that this would include local, Kurdish leadership tasked with overseeing matters of governance, education and even security.
But Mohtadi argued that Komala's work was not solely targeted toward Iranian Kurds and also sought to foster cooperation with other ethnic communities and opposition movements, including both republicans and monarchists, "with the exception of extremists, radical Islamists and those who engage in terrorist activities."
Such fringe groups, he argued, are "not useful to the democratic movement against the regime. Sometimes, in fact, they are harmful." He cited an example of a recent alliance he struck with Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi that was ultimately "sabotaged by extremist monarchists."
Disunity has also plagued Kurdish movements abroad, whose gains remain limited and face constant threats of reversal.
When Iraq's KRG moved to seek independence in 2017, nearly every regional country, along with the U.S., opposed the measure. In response to the vote, Iraqi troops retook vast swathes of territory seized by Kurdish forces during their joint fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
Two court rulings in Baghdad last year paved the way for further centralization in Iraq, removing a parliamentary quota system for electing minorities and revoking the KRG's authority to distribute salaries to its employees.
Even more recently in Syria, the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, who lead the AANES, signed an agreement in March to become integrated into the central government in Damascus, now headed by Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former Islamist militant chief credited with leading the rebel offensive that toppled President Bashar al-Assad in December.
Two months later, mutual distrust remains. While Sharaa has promised to afford greater recognition to Syrian Kurds, he has rejected calls for greater decentralization and talk of separatist ideals.
Despite these setbacks, Mohtadi remained optimistic about what lies ahead for Kuds in Iran and beyond, while acknowledging the need to continue striving for greater international support.
"We have to raise our political awareness about the Kurdish rights and the Kurdish issue in the West, in the United States, with the administration, with the media, with the Congress," Mohtadi said. "We have to continue our work. It takes time, but we will succeed. We will succeed. I'm hopeful for the future of the Kurds more than before."
However, while generally supportive of the Kurdish cause in other countries, such as Iraq, Syria and Turkey, Mohtadi was reluctant to frame Komala's current goals as being linked to the long-sought establishment of a united, independent Kurdistan spanning all four nations.
"This is the dream of every Kurd, and it is something we deserve, but it should be left to future generations to resolve," Mohtadi said. "At this stage, every part of Kurdistan should seek their respective rights within the boundaries of the countries in which there are significant Kurdish populations."
A civil defense team carries out search and rescue operations following a missile strike by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps on Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government capital of Erbil, on January 17, 2024.
A civil defense team carries out search and rescue operations following a missile strike by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps on Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government capital of Erbil, on January 17, 2024.
SAFIN HAMID/AFP/Getty Images
Regional Spillover
Still, the Kurdish issue has a tendency to transcend borders. A number of Iranian Kurdish factions, including PJAK and Komala's Communist Party and Reform factions, are known to operate in Iraq's Kurdish regions.
The Iranian military has occasionally launched attacks against Kurdish targets, most recently in January of last year, when the IRGC conducted a series of missile strikes against what Iranian officials alleged to be a base for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency in the KRG capital of Erbil.
Leadership in both Baghdad and Erbil rejected the supposed Israeli presence in northern Iraq. Israel does, however, have a long history of seeking to promote ties with Kurdish movements across the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
Mossad leadership has in past decades made direct contact with Iraqi Kurdish officials, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first and potentially only world leader to support the KRG's independence bid in 2017, prompting further regional backlash.
The situation in Iran is in some ways even more complicated. Netanyahu, having played a pivotal role in supporting Trump's 2018 decision to scrap the nuclear deal secured by former President Barack Obama three years earlier, is once again fueling skepticism toward a new agreement with Tehran.
In place of diplomacy, the Israeli premier has repeatedly threatened strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, with some officials calling for preemptive joint action alongside the U.S. Trump, however, has downplayed his enthusiasm for such kinetic measures, and has warned Netanyahu against taking unilateral action that could threaten the ongoing nuclear negotiations.
Mohtadi, for his part, was similarly cautious about the prospect of foreign military action against Iran, though he did not rule out forging a partnership with Israel.
"We welcome any support from any democratic country in the region or in the West for our struggle against this regime," Mohtadi said. "We haven't had any. What we need is in the future is that a free, democratic Iran, will not be an enemy of Israel."
"We do not want this slogan of destruction of Israel to continue in the future," he added. "We don't want hostilities against the United States and the West. We do not want hostilities against our neighbors in the future and the remedy for all of these bad policies is a democratic change in Iran."