Iranian Kurdish militias and the U.S. have recently consulted whether and how to attack Iranian security forces in the country’s west, according to three people with knowledge of the talks.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semiautonomous region of northern Iraq has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country's military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles.
The goal would be to create room for Iranians opposed to the current government to rise up now that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top officials have been killed since the U.S.-Israeli attack began Saturday, two of the sources said.
A final decision has not yet been made on the operation and its possible timing, added the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk freely about sensitive military planning.
The groups have requested U.S. military support and Iraqi leaders in Erbil and Baghdad have also been in touch with the Trump administration in recent days, they said.
The forces are in talks with the United States about CIA help to provide weapons, two of the sources said.
CNN was the first to report on the CIA's involvement with the groups and the potential ground operation. Axios said this week that President Trump held a telephone call with two of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s top leaders.
Reuters could not independently confirm the extent of the CIA’s involvement in the planning of the operation, whether it had facilitated the weapons, or if any U.S. forces planned to go into Iran with the Kurdish groups.
The CIA declined to comment. The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The KRG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kurdish ops would require U.S. support
Any operation from Iraq would probably require significant U.S. military and intelligence support.
The Pentagon says the two U.S. bases in Erbil have supported the international coalition fighting Daesh terrorists.
Kurdish groups in northern Iraq have a long history of working with the U.S., but their shifting allegiances and ideologies have at times strained ties with Washington.
The United States worked with some of the Kurdish groups in Iraq both during the Iraq War and the battle against Daesh.
But it is unclear how successful the Iranian Kurdish groups would be in their fight inside Iran. The groups' fighters have varying degrees of experience on the battlefield.
A source cited by CNN said the plan would be for Kurdish armed forces to take on Iranian security forces to make it easier for an uprising of unarmed Iranians in the country’s cities.
It is not clear exactly how such an operation in Iran by the Kurds will be received by other countries in the region.
An armed uprising by the Iranian Kurds could have serious consequences for Iran's stability.
It could add fuel to an armed separatist movement among the country's ethnic Baloch minority that keeps close ties with separatists in Pakistan's neighboring restive province of Balochistan.
It is unlikely that Islamabad would tolerate any move toward Baloch independence.
Türkiye, a strong supporter of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has seen the integration deal between Damascus and Kurdish forces as critical to restoring state authority across Syria.
It had threatened its own military operation against the YPG terrorists in the north if the group did not agree to come under central government control.
Ankara has been working to advance its long-running efforts towards securing peace with the outlawed PKK and is unlikely to be sympathetic toward the arming of Kurdish groups close to its borders.