While Kurds have been leading the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and in Turkey the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) has renewed its anti-government insurgency, the Kurds of Iran have remained largely quiescent for the past two decades, after being effectively and ruthlessly suppressed by the ayatollahs. In the past few months, however, the country’s three largest Kurdish groups have decided once again to engage in armed struggle against the regime. Jonathan Spyer and Benjamin Weinthal write:
[T]he Iranian Kurds’ return to militancy further complicates relations between Iran and the Kurdish autonomous area in northern Iraq. Iran supports the powerful Shiite militias in Iraq, who are engaged in a number of territorial disputes with the Iraqi Kurds. In addition, Iraqi Kurdish aspirations for independence stand in the way of the Iranian desire for a united, Shiite-dominated Iraq controlled by pro-Iranian elements. The beginnings of the Kurdish insurgency in Iran, emerging from across the border in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, only adds fuel to a combustible situation. . . .
[I]t would be wrong to expect major change in the status or situation of Iran’s Kurds in the immediate future. Nevertheless, the re-emergence of Kurdish insurgency in Iran is a significant development. Iran has proved a champion at exporting unrest and paramilitary activity to neighboring countries—see Lebanese Hizballah, the Shiite militias of Iraq, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and others. The revived Kurdish armed campaign is the first attempt in some time to bring the fires of regional instability—so ably stoked in a variety of arenas by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards—back across the borders into Iran itself.
Read more on American Interest: http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/15/iranian-kurds-join-the-fight/