Iranian ethnic minorities exiled abroad are warning that efforts to overthrow the country’s theocratic Islamic regime will falter without swift international support, particularly from the United States.
“We need help. The uprising and our people’s resistance cannot continue without comprehensive and sustained support,” Khalil Kani Sanani, the spokesman for the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, told the Jerusalem Post Thursday. PAK is a Kurdish Peshmerga group operating in the mountainous regions of Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan.
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Sanani said the Iranian government is currently gearing up “thousands” more troops to shut down the uprising, and has arrested members of its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who have refused to shoot protesters.
The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan is also operating in neighboring Iraq after being banned by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Commander Sayran Gargoli told CBS News that protestors have a chance at toppling the country’s regime, but only “if the people who are demonstrating on the street get international help.”
The pleas for global support come as the United States faces pressure from Israel and other Arab nations not to provide military aid to protestors, due to fears of retaliation and broader regional conflict, according to the New York Times and other outlets. President Donald Trump has also been told that launching strikes now would be unlikely to result in successful regime change, according to the Wall Street Journal. The president appeared to publicly appeared to back off on previous suggestions he would authorize strikes against Tehran when he said Wednesday Iran told him it would not execute demonstrators. At least 12,000 targeted by the Ayatollah’s government for protesting are feared dead. That number could be as high as 20,000, according to CBS News.
Sanani, the Kurdish PAK spokesman, said he “believes the regime in Tehran will not refrain from killing people.”
“We at PAK are fighting them with fire and heroism. But we cannot do it alone. We need outside help. We need the US and Israel to help us,” he said. “The situation in Iran is catastrophic… IRGC ground forces have been deployed.”
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The country has shut off the internet to thwart demonstrations, making it difficult to estimate numbers protesting, though it could be in the millions, as the uprisings have broken out nationwide. Videos circulating on social media appear to depict hundreds of thousands gathered in the streets. Elon Musk has given free Starlink internet access to the country, a “crucial” donation that has been a game-changer in enabling the demonstrations to survive as long as they have, Iranians told ABC News. Soldiers are going door to door targeting civilians using Musk’s Starlinks.
PPDKI leader Mustafa Hijri hoped for a U.S. intervention, with strikes on Iran that “hit the centers of suppressing forces who are shooting people on the streets.” In the absence of such help from abroad, sending Kurdish PDKI forces across the Iraq border to support Iranian protesters now, he suggested, would only invite more widespread killing.
“The majority of the people in Iran are unhappy with this regime, and they stand against it,” Hijri said, adding that the opposition fighters exiled to Iraq “have been trained, and they are there, ready for when the party needs them.”
The Kurds are one of the world’s largest stateless ethnic groups, with ancestral roots in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries.
Hijri is one of many Iranian Kurds living in exile due to political oppression. Others have been executed by the Ayatollah’s government, while the broader Kurdish diaspora is estimated to be around 2 million.
Trump initially indicated he was sending military support to aid Iranian Kurds and others protesting the Ayatollah if they were being executed, saying “we are locked and loaded and ready to go,” on New Year’s Day.
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But the president appeared to pull back Wednesday when he said he was informed the killing of protesters in Iran, including Erfan Soltani, “is stopping.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Thursday that 800 planned executions had been postponed due to pressure from Trump.
She said Trump had made it clear to Iran that “if the killing continues, there will be grave consequences,” adding that “all options remain on the table.”