{"id":14404,"date":"2026-04-09T11:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/?p=14404"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:41:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:41:34","slug":"how-tom-barrack-caused-washington-to-lose-the-kurdish-army-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/how-tom-barrack-caused-washington-to-lose-the-kurdish-army-in-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"How Tom Barrack Caused Washington to Lose the “Kurdish Army” in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the least discussed questions in the U.S.\u2013Israeli war plan against Iran since February 28, 2026 concerns why the Iranian Kurdish arena did not turn into an active ground front in East Kurdistan (the name used in Kurdish political literature for the Kurdish regions of western Iran), despite the presence of armed Kurdish organizations and despite the border geography with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which theoretically provides a considerable operational space.<\/p>\n

A purely military reading may not provide a sufficient answer. It is true that Iran issued direct threats to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, warning against any armed action launched against it from camps of Kurdish parties, most of which are located in areas under the authority of the Kurdistan Regional Government. It is also true that there were early Turkish warnings to the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) against carrying out any incursions into Iran. But all this is not enough to explain why Kurdish parties did not respond to a direct request from U.S. President Donald Trump to participate in ground operations\u2014so much so that the name of the Kurds in Iran became a major headline in global media outlets, and inaccurate reports circulated about Kurds launching a ground attack in the early days of the war.<\/p>\n

The issue is largely connected to the level of political trust that Iranian Kurdish parties have in the actor expected to sponsor any such involvement\u2014namely, the United States. In this context, an important hypothesis emerges: the experience accumulated by the Kurds over the past year in Syria, under the management of U.S. envoy Tom Barrack, became a cross-border political deterrent that made the Kurds of Iran more cautious and less willing to enter a ground adventure without prior political guarantees.<\/p>\n

Main hypothesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

This hypothesis is based on the idea that the Kurds of Iran did not view the ongoing war against Tehran solely from the perspective of exhausting the Iranian regime. They also considered Washington\u2019s practical approaches toward the Kurds in Syria and Iraq over recent years. In Iraqi Kurdistan, Washington did not support the Kurdistan independence referendum in the autumn of 2017 and made no effort to stop the attack by Popular Mobilization Forces militias on the region. Since Tom Barrack was appointed Special Envoy to Syria in May 2025, U.S. policy has clearly leaned toward prioritizing the \u201creunification of the Syrian state\u201d and integrating the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the structure of the new central authority in Damascus.<\/p>\n

Barrack issued a series of statements about the drawbacks of autonomous governance in states\u2014remarks that nationalist centralists seized upon to legitimize new wars of extermination inside Syria. His statements even encouraged Popular Mobilization Forces militias to question the experience of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, celebrating controversial remarks by Tom Barrack himself about the failure of federalism in Iraq\u2014something that no Iraqi politician hostile to the region had dared to say throughout the years since the fall of Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

First: What did Tom Barrack do in the Syrian file?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Barrack entered the Syrian file, he carried a clear vision of the type of state Washington wanted in post-Assad Syria: a centralized state with a single authority, a single army, and limited local frameworks. This orientation appeared through a gradual course\u2014pushing toward the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), or at most integrating these forces into Syrian state institutions guided by non-coexistence ideological tendencies. Barrack presented these ideas with authorization from the Trump administration as measures that would later allow a comprehensive U.S. withdrawal from Syria, while sending repeated signals that Washington no longer sees a long-term future for a separate partnership with the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria.<\/p>\n

This approach gained further weight when Washington, through Barrack, approved the integration of thousands of former foreign fighters into the new Syrian military structure, on the condition of \u201ctransparency,\u201d even though many of them had belonged to jihadist rebel formations. Previously, this issue had been one of the most complex obstacles to Western rapprochement with Damascus.<\/p>\n

From a Kurdish perspective, Washington\u2014represented by Tom Barrack\u2014appeared more flexible regarding the integration of individuals emerging from the environment of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and al-Qaeda, while at the same time being more insistent on pushing the Kurds to abandon their own political and military formula in favor of a jihadist vision that claims to have abandoned jihad but retains all the tools of jihadist mobilization in any internal conflict.<\/p>\n

Efforts aimed at applying decentralized governance models in the region, despite the promises they hold for societies exhausted by long years of dictatorship and wars, will inevitably be complex, uneven, vulnerable to setbacks, and subject to external manipulation.<\/p>\n

When Tom Barrack said that \u201cfederalism does not work\u201d in Syria and Iraq, he was reaffirming a pattern of international thinking that goes back a century\u2014a pattern that has repeatedly failed to bring peace, stability, or justice to the region. His statement, which specifically criticized the Syrian Democratic Forces for being slow in negotiating with the new authorities in Damascus, implied that decentralized governance constitutes an obstacle to conflict resolution. The leadership of what was called the \u201cnew centralism\u201d was quick to seize upon this rhetoric to launch a bloody attack on the Druze in Sweida, while threatening the Kurds as the next target.<\/p>\n

A previous analysis by the Kurdish Center for Studies remarked that it was not federalism that destabilized Iraq, as Barrack suggested; rather, it was the counterattack against the federal model that brought Iraq to the ground after years in which terrorism converged on its territory and produced what could be called an \u201cincubator of terror.\u201d Jihadist ideology did not succeed in governing Iraq, but it did lay the foundations for structural devastation in the country\u2014to the extent that even the victors themselves became a machine of destruction and corruption. In the end, it is not that federalism does not work; rather, it was the counterattack against federalism that undermined Iraq\u2019s experience, which still remains better than its surroundings in terms of the powers granted to both the regions and the center.<\/p>\n

Centralized states in the Middle East have not produced unity or stability. Instead, they have sown division, created power vacuums, and ignited cycles of violence whose effects have spread beyond borders. By concentrating power in the hands of narrow elites, these systems have produced push factors that led to widespread waves of migration and displacement. At the same time, authoritarian structures have helped create fertile environments for extremism and terrorism.<\/p>\n

The cumulative effects of these dynamics reveal the depth of the risks associated with such political systems. Assuming that reviving or continuing the same authoritarian central model could lead to different outcomes ignores decades of evidence proving the opposite.<\/p>\n

Second: The field realities observed by the Kurds of Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n

On January 8, 2026, the Syrian Ministry of Defense announced a ceasefire in three neighborhoods of Aleppo after three days of violent attacks on local forces, amid shelling, fires, mass displacement, and severe violations.<\/p>\n

The discussion is no longer theoretical about centralization versus decentralization. Instead, it now reflects a model showing that the new state in Damascus is ready to use force in areas with significant Kurdish presence when negotiations stall.<\/p>\n

During the attack on areas east of the Euphrates in January 2026, Washington did not explicitly object to a limited operation against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). However, the operation, as it unfolded, was not limited but rather a comprehensive war against the Kurds. In response, the general commander of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi, declared a general mobilization directed both at Syrian forces and specifically at U.S. policy.<\/p>\n

Days later, the situation expanded further. On January 21, 2026, Reuters published an investigation on how Ahmed al-Sharaa regained areas that had been under SDF control while Washington remained by his side. According to the report, Syrian officials had proposed in Paris the idea of a limited operation to retake certain areas and received no objections. Two weeks later, when the offensive began, Washington started sending signals to the SDF that it was stepping back from its traditional support, according to a U.S. diplomat and other sources. Reuters also reported, citing three sources, that Barrack told SDF commander Mazloum Abdi during a meeting on January 17, 2026, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, that U.S. interests lie with Ahmed al-Sharaa rather than with the SDF.<\/p>\n

For the Kurds of Iran, this was enough to reinforce a pessimistic impression: if this is the fate of Rojava after years of fighting alongside Washington, what would the fate of Iran\u2019s Kurds be if they entered the war only to be left afterward facing an even more extreme centralized state?<\/p>\n

Third: How the Syrian model affected the calculations of the Kurds of Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n

On March 6, 2026, the Associated Press reported, quoting Kurdish leaders from East Kurdistan, that they were not planning an imminent cross-border attack on Iran, but might join a ground invasion if the United States launched one. However, they all agreed that Kurds \u201cshould not put themselves at the spearhead of the attack.\u201d This phrase reveals the depth of their caution. The issue is no longer about the presence of fighters or the ability to operate through the border mountains, but rather about the question: who will guarantee what comes after the war?<\/p>\n

From this perspective, the firm stance of Iranian Kurdish parties\u2014or what some American and Israeli circles saw as \u201cimpossible conditions\u201d\u2014can be understood. These parties were most likely reading the Syrian experience line by line. They saw Washington pushing Rojava toward integration into a centralized state while opening the door to a military operation with genocidal characteristics against the Kurds. In this light, demanding much stronger political and legal guarantees becomes inevitable, because the alternative may be worse than remaining outside the war altogether.<\/p>\n

Fourth: Why was this more influential than the military factor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Kurds of Iran do not view war as a short tactical moment but as a gateway to the day after. For them, the day after is more dangerous than the day of fighting itself. If they participate in weakening Tehran or opening a wide internal front without clear U.S. guarantees about the future political system, decentralization, national rights, or protection from retaliation by a new authority or later regional interventions, they could face an Iranian version even more violent than what happened to the Kurds in Syria.<\/p>\n

The Syrian model provided them with an almost complete picture: a long war, partnership with Washington, a relatively coherent self-administration structure, followed by intense U.S. pressure to return to the center, alongside a declining willingness to protect that arrangement on the ground.<\/p>\n

Fifth: The significance of the Turkish factor in this assessment<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is an additional element that made the Kurds of Iran more cautious: the Syrian experience also showed how U.S. pressure intersects with Turkish objections. Any large-scale Kurdish movement inside Iran, without a formal U.S. legal commitment, would not only mean confronting Tehran but could also open the door to hostility from other regional central governments\u2014especially Turkey\u2014placing Kurdish forces within a geographically encircled environment on multiple fronts.<\/p>\n

Possible scenarios<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first scenario, and the most likely, is that Iranian Kurdish hesitation will continue as long as Washington remains unable to provide political guarantees that go beyond temporary understandings. In this scenario, some limited movements or symbolic operations may still occur, but without turning into a broad ground front.<\/p>\n

The second scenario is that the United States may later attempt\u2014if the war continues\u2014to rebuild trust through political commitments, agreements, or more direct support. However, the success of such efforts will remain limited unless accompanied by a real change in its behavior toward the Kurds in Syria itself. The negative signals coming from east of the Euphrates have raised Kurdish concerns everywhere.<\/p>\n

The third scenario, the least likely, is that a dramatic development on the ground inside Iran could push some Kurdish parties to gamble on chaos and open a broad front despite their doubts. Yet the available information so far does not suggest this is their preferred option, especially given their insistence on not becoming the spearhead of an attack without a U.S. commitment in the form of a law passed by Congress, similar to the Iraq Liberation Act that paved the way for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime in 2003.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The absence of a \u201cKurdish ground army\u201d in the war in Iran reflects a lack of confidence in the U.S. plan for \u201cthe day after.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is likely that one of the central reasons Washington failed to transform the Kurds of Iran into an effective ground force in the ongoing war is the erosion of Kurdish trust in the U.S. administration, following events in Syria during 2025 and January 2026. This does not mean that Tom Barrack is the only factor, nor that Iranian Kurdish parties were originally ready to enter the war and then withdrew solely because of him. But he was likely one of the most important reasons behind this reassessment, which concluded that Iranian Kurdish involvement appears highly risky and offers limited gains.<\/p>\n

U.S. policy regarding the Kurdish issue in Syria has contributed to undermining the possibility of benefiting from Kurdish forces in Iran\u2014the only local actor capable of extending the war into Iranian territory through an organized ground campaign.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction One of the least discussed questions in the U.S.\u2013Israeli war plan against Iran since February 28, 2026 concerns why the Iranian Kurdish arena did not turn into an active ground front in East Kurdistan (the name used in Kurdish political literature for the Kurdish regions of western Iran), despite the presence of armed Kurdish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3550,"featured_media":14405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[549,57,41,725,40,1286],"ppma_author":[1273],"class_list":["post-14404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-autonomous-administration-of-north-and-east-syria","tag-iran","tag-kurds","tag-sdf","tag-syria","tag-u-s-tom-barrack"],"authors":[{"term_id":1273,"user_id":3550,"is_guest":0,"slug":"iranian-studies-unit","display_name":"Iranian Studies Unit","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/572c726a6d85e695d5b44a66efdae94702cfe8349e666b0bdfb457154618bebe?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14404"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14408,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14404\/revisions\/14408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14404"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}