Illustrative image. (Israeli Defense Forces)
The Israeli Mossad spy agency armed Kurdish militias in Iraq with weapons and ammunition seized from Hamas and Hezbollah as part of a plot to topple the Iranian government, journalist Amit Segal revealed in a report to Israel’s Yisrael Hayom on June 5.
The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, was also actively involved in the plot , but it was later canceled by President Donald Trump due to pressure from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Kurdish militias received financial support and vehicles, and were equipped with small arms, anti-tank missiles, grenades, and mortar shells seized from Hamas and Hezbollah during the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The plot was aimed at bringing down the Iranian government.
Segal’s report described the plan as a “bold operation” centered on a large-scale Kurdish incursion from Iraq into Iran. The plan included liberating Kurdish regions, advancing eastward, and sparking additional uprisings across the country.
Israel even began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bases near the border to prepare the ground for the operation.
Nevertheless, the plot was halted at the last moment when Trump received an angry phone call from Erdogan, who strongly opposes any Kurdish empowerment in the region. In the wake of the call, the plan was called off.
“It’s ironic that weapons that Iran funded were almost used against it, and maybe still will be,” Segal wrote.
Last March, the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, which is affiliated with the Turkish government, reported that Ankara had succeeded in thwarting an Israeli plot to recruit Kurdish militants as a ground force in the war against Iran.
The Islamic Republic has warned against such a move, and has been launching strikes against Kurdish militants in Iraq on a regular basis ever since.
While the latest report suggests that the U.S. didn’t go on with the plot because of Turkey’s objection, the truth is that the plan put together by Mossad and CIA was never actually going to work.
Iranian Kurdish militia groups are deeply fractured with differing ideologies, and competing agendas. Adding to this the fact that while Iran, despite facing pressure from American and Israeli strikes at the time, its regular and reserve ground forces, numbered in the millions, were completely free to quickly attack and crush any uprising. A few thousand Kurdish militants would have had little, if no hope of succeeding.
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spoiler, iran will send them back to hezbollah again where they will still be used