Iranian–Kurdish conflict

• 1. Introduction

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  The Iranian-Kurdish conflict is a dispute that has run continuously since 1918, outlasting empires, revolutions, and shifts in the world order. In more than a century of fighting, the Kurdish opposition in Western Iran has faced down monarchs, Soviet-backed puppet states, and the Islamic Republic. More than 30,000 Kurds died in the rebellion that followed the 1979 revolution alone. Yet the conflict has never fully ended. What drives a conflict this durable? Who are the players, and what, exactly, do they want? The answers reach back to a tribal chieftain in the early twentieth century, run through a brief republic that lasted less than a year, and carry forward to a coalition formed as recently as 2026. Each chapter of this story raises the same question in a different register: what happens when a people demand self-determination inside a state that refuses to yield it?

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• 2. Tribal Roots

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  Simko Shikak launched an Ottoman-backed uprising against the Qajar dynasty in 1918, and it ran until 1922. Historians debate what the revolt actually was. Simko's movement contained elements of Kurdish nationalism, but scholars argue those elements were not articulate enough to make Kurdish identity the central cause. Historian Ervand Abrahamian describes Simko as notorious for massacring thousands of Assyrians and for harassing democrats. The uprising lacked any administrative organization, and Simko was primarily interested in plunder. Even so, some Kurds today revere him as a hero of independence. By 1926 he had regrouped, only to see half his troops defect when the army engaged him, forcing him to flee to Iraq.

  Other tribal leaders filled the same space in the following decade. Jafar Sultan of the Hewraman region controlled the territory between Marivan and north of Halabja from about 1921 until 1925, remaining independent until Persian forces reasserted control. He revolted again in 1929, but was crushed. Hama Rashid led a separate tribal uprising during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, with a first stage running from late 1941 to April 1942 and a second beginning in 1944, ending ultimately in Rashid's defeat. That uprising is considered one of the leading factors behind the emergence of organized Kurdish political nationalism, a shift that would take the conflict in a new direction entirely.

  Komala began political activities in Iran in 1943, followed shortly after by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran. Their aim was partial or complete autonomy for the Kurdish regions, and their emergence marked the transformation from tribal revolt to organized political separatism.

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• 3. The Republic of Mahabad

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  In December 1946, Soviet forces withdrew from northwestern Iran, and within days the government in Tehran sent troops into Mahabad unopposed. The episode closed quickly, but what had briefly existed there was remarkable. The KDP-I and communist groups, with Soviet backing, had declared the Republic of Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan, part of what is now the southern section of West Azerbaijan Province. It arose alongside a second Soviet puppet state, the Azerbaijan People's Government.

  The republic's reach was narrow from the start. It covered only Mahabad and the cities immediately around it. Southern Iranian Kurdistan fell inside the Anglo-American zone, beyond the Soviet umbrella, and the republic failed to draw the tribes outside Mahabad into the nationalist cause. Those structural limits meant that when the Soviets withdrew, the experiment collapsed. At least 1,000 people died during the crisis. The Marxist insurgencies led by the KDP-I and Komala continued for decades after the republic fell, though neither organization advocated for a fully separate Kurdish state or a greater Kurdistan in the way the PKK later would in Turkey.

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• 4. Revolution and Insurgency

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  In 1967-68, Iranian government troops put down a Kurdish revolt in Western Iran, consolidating uprisings concentrated in the Mahabad-Urumiya region. The episode was serious enough to require a military response, but it did not match what was coming. The 1979 Kurdish rebellion proved to be the most serious insurrection the new Iranian regime faced. Led by the KDPI and Komala in Iranian Kurdistan, it ended in December 1982. By that point 10,000 people had been killed and 200,000 displaced.

  The violence did not end with the rebellion. In July 1989, the KDPI's leader in exile was assassinated, and the killing fueled a new insurrection throughout the early and mid-1990s. Iran's response was methodical: a campaign of targeted assassinations of KDPI leaders combined with a crackdown on support bases in Western Iran. In 1996, the KDPI announced a unilateral ceasefire and retreated to a low profile. That ceasefire held for nearly two decades before clashes resumed in 2015.

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• 5. PJAK and the Twenty-First Century

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  PJAK, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, officially began its armed conflict with Iran in April 2004. The organization is based in the border area with Iraqi Kurdistan and is affiliated with the Marxist PKK from Turkey, though PJAK itself tends to downplay that connection. In one of the first actions of the Obama administration, PJAK was declared a terrorist organization. Iranian and Western analysts regard PJAK as a separatist group, though researcher Habeeb noted that PJAK's goal is Kurdish autonomy rather than posing a fundamental threat to the Islamic Republic.

  In 2011, an Iranian offensive on PJAK bases led to a ceasefire agreement. Sporadic clashes followed in 2012, and by mid-2013 the fighting had resumed, escalating again in 2016. The same year, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, which had stayed out of armed conflict since 1996, returned to the field. The Kurdistan Freedom Party and Komalah both expressed support for the PDKI's cause and clashed with Iranian security forces in 2016 and 2017. The PDKI described the renewed fighting as a response to a growing sense of discontent and alienation in the region referred to as Rojhelat. The commander of the PAK military wing cited daily arbitrary executions of Kurds in Iran as a reason for declaring hostilities.

  In 2004, the PDKI had already called for federalisation of Iran, endorsing a federal system for a multi-national, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious country. That political demand has remained part of the landscape alongside the armed campaigns.

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• 6. The Iraqi Border Dimension

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  Iran has periodically launched strikes against the KDPI and other Iranian Kurdish dissident groups based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The frontier between Iraq and Iran became a diplomatic pressure point in March 2023, when Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani, who came to power through a coalition of Iranian-backed parties, signed a border security agreement with Iran. On the 28th of August, Iraq formally agreed to disarm the Kurdish groups and relocate them to camps near Mosul by the 19th of September. According to the New Arab, the groups were not disarmed, and Iraq appeared to lack the capability to carry out the agreement.

  In January 2014, Iranian forces killed a KDPI member while he was distributing leaflets. In September 2014, the KDPI engaged Iranian security forces for the first time in many years, killing at least 6 Iranian soldiers. It was unclear whether this represented a deliberate policy change by the party or an isolated sequence of incidents. In May 2015, a suspected Iranian attack disguised as PKK fighters on PJAK forces along the Iran-Iraqi Kurdistan border killed 6 people, 2 from the KDPI and 4 PKK members or alleged Iranian agents.

  On the 4th of May 2015, Farinaz Khosravani, a 25-year-old Kurdish hotel chambermaid, died under unexplained circumstances in Mahabad. Three days later, ethnic Kurds rioted in the city. Unrest spread to other Kurdish cities, including Sardasht, where police clashed with hundreds of protesters on the 9th of May. By the 11th of May, sources from ARA reported 6 protesters killed. The Kurdistan Freedom Party and the PDKI both issued harsh responses.

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• 7. 2026 and the Coalition

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  In 2026, following the 2025-2026 Iran protests and a United States military buildup in the Middle East, the major Iranian Kurdish parties created the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, known as CPFIK. The stated goal was to bring down the Islamic Republic of Iran and to realize the Kurdish people's right to self-determination. The formation of a unified coalition marked a step beyond the fractured, party-by-party pattern of the preceding century, in which the KDPI, PJAK, the PDKI, PAK, and Komalah had each pursued separate strategies with varying degrees of coordination. Whether the CPFIK can sustain that unity under military and diplomatic pressure remains an open question, one that the conflict's long history suggests will not be answered quickly.

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