A panoply of Iranian Kurdish political and military groups opposed to the government in Tehran are based in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
They are separate from but have relationships with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Iraqi Kurdish body that officially administers the Kurdistan Region of Iraq from the city of Erbil.
Reports have emerged in recent days that these Iranian Kurdish groups have been armed by the US ahead of a potential ground offensive into Iran to bolster continuing US and Israeli military operations against Tehran. The groups have been reticent to publicly share significant details of what such operations might look like.
The Iranian Kurdish groups also have members on the other side of the border in Iran, but Tehran considers them terrorist organisations and they are largely exiled from their own country. Many of the group members have been living in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq for decades, and have families with residency permits and homes there, while others represent the groups from various European countries and North America.
Many of the groups’ leaders and members have survived attempted assassination attempts, while others have been killed in attacks they blame on Tehran. They have carried out several previous attempts at armed insurgency against the Iranian government. The groups do not publish statistics on their size or number of armed members.
The KRG has distanced itself and its official armed forces, known as the Peshmerga, from any operation, amid concerns that Iran would retaliate with further strikes on territory under its control.
“Reports about the Kurdistan Region of Iraq or the Iraqi Kurds being a part of a plan to arm and support the Iranian Kurdish opposition to cross the borders into Iran for an armed struggle is incorrect and false,” the KRG parliament's deputy speaker Hemin Hawrami wrote in a statement.
The groups’ armed presence within the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has often been a point of contention in the past between the KRG and Tehran, which has put pressure on Erbil to disarm the groups and stop them from agitating against Iranian authorities.
The groups are suspicious of monarchist revivalism in Iran, because many members recall persecution under the former Shah, who was overthrown in a 1979 revolution. The groups have also often splintered and had disagreements between themselves, and on various occasions in the past tried to unite under a single umbrella.
The most recent unification took place last month, when they formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan. This body’s stated aims are to overthrow Iran’s clerical leadership, “achieve the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination”, and to establish a “national and democratic entity” in Kurdish-majority areas of Iran.
Who are those groups?
The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI)
Often described as one of the largest and best-organised of the Iranian Kurdish groups, the PDKI was founded in 1945 in the western Iranian city of Mahabad, and its headquarters is today in the city of Koya in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Led by Mustafa Hijri, the group says it aims to “attain Kurdish national rights within a federal and democratic Iran”. After an internal disagreement in the mid-2000s, some members of the PDKI formed a splinter group, but the two sides announced their reunification in 2022.
The group’s base in Koya was hit by two large Iranian ballistic missile attacks in 2018 and 2022. The first attack killed at least 15 people, including party officials, while the second killed at least 18 people and came after Tehran accused the exiled Iranian Kurdish groups of “fuelling the fire” of demonstrations that took place across Iran following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman.
“The brutal Iranian regime is accusing us of fuelling the fire of the ongoing demonstrations that have engulfed Iran,” a PDKI official told the Iraq Oil Report news outlet at the time. Its Koya base was also attacked earlier this week. The group blamed the aerial attack on Iran but said it did not cause any casualties.
The PDKI is a key group in the reported US-backed efforts for a ground invasion into Iran. In an interview with the BBC’s Persian service on Wednesday, spokesman Khaled Azizi declined to confirm reports of a call between Mustafa Hijri and US President Donald Trump, but said there had been two decades of contact between “various institutions” in the US and the PDKI, and that “if there was contact, it would not be strange”.
The group generally enjoys a good relationship with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties in the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan
Formed in 1969 in western Iran, Komala’s members say they were subject to persecution during the reign of the Shah, who was overthrown in 1979, the same year Komala was established as a formal political party with leftist socialist beliefs.
The group also fought back against attempts to quash dissent in the new Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and is now based near the city of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
Led by Abdullah Mohtadi, whose official biography says he stands for a “democratic, pluralist and non-centralist Iran”, the group initially declined to join the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan last month, saying it wanted greater clarity on how fighters from the groups would work together and on the form of joint governing during a possible transitional period, if the regime in Iran were to fall.
But this week it agreed to join the coalition, and said in a statement that the current “situation” requires “unity, co-ordination and joint action”.
“For the first time, all major Kurdish parties have come together as one in a new coalition – a historic step towards shaping a new future for Kurds and a democratic Iran,” Mr Mohtadi wrote on X.
Komala – Reform Faction
Also known as the Organisation of the Toilers of Kurdistan, the Komala Reform Faction split off from the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan in the mid-2000s. An attempted reunification broke down with fighting in 2023 that left at least two people dead.
Led by a man called Reza Kaabi, about whom little is published, the group is also based in the Sulaymaniyah region of Iraqi Kurdistan. The group generally has good relations with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the second party alongside the KDP that controls the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and is dominant in Sulaymaniyah.
PJAK
The Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) is a militant Iranian Kurdish group formed in 2004, which has close ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). That Kurdish militant group, which has affiliates across the Middle East, fought a four-decade insurgency with the Turkish state before agreeing to disarm in a complex and continuing dissolution process that began last year, which the PJAK refused to join.
Like the PKK, the PJAK operates from the Qandil mountains in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, near the border with Iran. It is co-chaired by Peyman Viyan and Emir Kerimi, and has carried out several waves of armed struggle against the Iranian government.
The US designated the group as a terrorist organisation in 2009 over its links to the PKK. Turkey also designates it as a terrorist organisation, and its existence has been a point of both co-operation and tension between Ankara and Tehran. The two governments have co-operated in operations against the group, but some analysts and observers in Turkey also accuse Iran of sheltering the group because its members have fled across the border into Iran during Turkish military strikes on long-established positions in the Qandil mountains.
Turkey is concerned about reports of it being part of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan and potentially receiving US backing over concerns that it will increase demands for Kurdish autonomy within Iran.
“The activities of groups that fuel ethnic separatism, such as the terrorist organisation PJAK, negatively affect not only Iran's security but also the general peace and stability of the region,” a Turkish Defence Ministry spokesman told journalists on Thursday. “We are closely monitoring PJAK's activities in Iran and developments in the region in co-ordination with the relevant institutions of our state.”
Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK)
Currently led by Hussein Yazdanpanah, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) is a militant and political group founded in 1991. It has several bases in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, while members inside Iran have attacked Iranian security forces in the past. They have also attacked them since the beginning of this year, amid widespread anti-government protests inside Iran.
In recent days the PAK base at Pirde in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has been hit by aerial attacks that the group blames on Iran, leading to at least one death among its fighters.
The group worked alongside KRG security and military forces in operations against ISIS, when the group came close to the Pirde bases.
Khabat
The Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle (Khabat) is a relatively small party that describes itself as a “national force that continues its national struggle to achieve the rights of Kurdistan's citizens”. Founded in 1980, it is currently led by its founder’s son, Babasheikh Hosseini.
