이란 전쟁, 쿠르드 문제로 재편되는 지정학적 리스크 분석
The Iran War Through the Kurdish Lens - JINSA
미국 억지력 약화로 인한 지정학적 불확실성이 글로벌 주식 시장 전반에 상당한 위험 프리미엄을 발생시킵니다.
핵심 요약
미국과 이란의 양해각서는 이란에 경제적 이점을 주었으나 핵 야심을 제약하지 못했습니다. 향후 안정성을 위해 쿠르드 문제에 대한 전략적 재평가가 필요합니다.
핵심요약
- 미국-이란 양해각서(MoU)는 이란에 제재 완화와 경제적 숨통을 제공했으나 핵 및 미사일 프로그램에 대한 실질적 제약을 부과하지 못했습니다.
- 양해각서의 결과로 이란은 강화되었고 미국의 억지력은 약화되었으며 이스라엘 안보가 감소했습니다.
- 향후 분쟁의 지속적인 전략적 결과를 위해서는 미국이 이란 쿠르드 반대 세력에 대한 역할을 명확히 정의해야 합니다.
도입
본 기사는 미-이란 관계의 변화가 이란 내부의 쿠르드 문제와 연계되어 지정학적 리스크를 어떻게 변화시키는지 분석합니다. 투자자들은 이 지역의 불안정성이 에너지 시장과 국제 제재 체제에 미치는 영향을 이해해야 합니다. 특히 이란 내 쿠르드 세력의 역할이 향후 분쟁의 양상에 미칠 잠재적 영향을 파악하는 것이 중요합니다.
본문 1: 지정학적 변화와 억지력 약화
미국-이란 양해각서(MoU)는 전략적 목표 달성 과정에서 미국의 억지력(deterrence)이 약화되었음을 보여주는 핵심 지표입니다. 양해각서는 이란에게 제재 완화와 경제적 숨통을 제공했지만, 핵 야심이나 탄도 미사일 프로그램에 대한 실질적인 제약을 부과하지 못했습니다. 이는 이란이 지역 내에서 더 강한 입지를 확보하고 미국의 개입에 대해 덜 경계하게 만드는 결과를 초래했습니다. 즉, 외교적 틀이 전략적 목표를 달성하는 데 실패했을 때, 분쟁은 더욱 예측 불가능한 양상으로 전개될 위험이 커집니다. 이처럼 외교적 틀이 전략적 목표를 달성하는 데 실패했을 때, 분쟁은 더욱 예측 불가능한 양상으로 전개될 위험이 커집니다.
본문 2: 쿠르드 문제의 전략적 재정의와 기회
향후 분쟁이 일시적인 중단에 그치지 않고 지속적인 전략적 결과를 내기 위해서는 미국이 이란의 정치적 미래에 대한 명확한 비전을 제시해야 합니다. 특히 이란 쿠르드 반대 세력(Kurdish opposition forces)를 단순히 주변부 이슈로 다루지 않고, 이란의 정치적 미래에 명확한 역할(clear role)을 부여하는 것이 필수적입니다. 이는 쿠르드 세력을 단순한 지역 분쟁의 당사자가 아닌, 이란 내부 정치 구조를 변화시키는 핵심 동력으로 인식하고 그들의 역량을 활용하는 것을 의미합니다. 이러한 접근 방식은 미국의 개입 전략을 보다 포괄적으로 만들고, 지역 안정에 기여할 수 있는 새로운 외교적 기회를 창출할 수 있습니다. 쿠르드 세력을 포용하는 것은 미국의 전략적 목표 달성 과정에서 예상치 못한 변수를 관리하고 장기적인 안정성을 확보하는 데 도움이 될 수 있습니다.
본문 3: 장기적 전망과 리스크
미국이 쿠르드 문제에 대한 접근 방식을 재정립하는 것은 단기적인 군사적 중단 이상의 장기적인 지정학적 결과를 가져올 수 있습니다. 만약 쿠르드 세력에 대한 전략적 참여가 성공적으로 이루어진다면, 이는 이란 내 정치적 분열을 심화시키고 지역 세력 균형에 중대한 변화를 가져올 수 있습니다. 그러나 이 과정에서 지역 강대국들(예: 터키)의 반발이나 이란 내부의 복잡한 정치적 역학 관계가 새로운 리스크로 작용할 수 있습니다. 따라서 미국은 군사적 목표와 정치적 목표를 통합하는 섬세한 전략을 구사해야 하며, 지역 내 다른 국가들의 이해관계를 고려하여 신중하게 접근해야 합니다. 이러한 다층적인 고려는 정책의 성공 가능성을 높이는 데 결정적인 요소가 될 것입니다.
결론
미국이 이란 내 쿠르드 세력에 대한 전략적 접근을 재평가하는 것은 단순한 인도주의적 고려를 넘어, 지역의 장기적인 안정성과 미국의 전략적 목표 달성에 필수적인 요소입니다. 향후 이 지역의 역학 관계는 쿠르드 세력의 역할 정의와 미국의 정책적 선택에 따라 크게 달라질 전망입니다. 투자자들은 이러한 지정학적 변동성이 에너지 및 지역 금융 시장에 미치는 영향을 지속적으로 모니터링할 필요가 있습니다. 정책의 성공 여부는 협력의 깊이와 지역 내 이해관계자들의 반응에 달려있을 것입니다.
Original Article
The Iran War Through the Kurdish Lens - JINSA
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The U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) marked a remarkable reversal of the strategic gains Washington appeared to have achieved during Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion. The agreement granted Tehran sanctions relief, economic breathing room, and de facto security guarantees while imposing few durable constraints on its nuclear ambitions, ballistic missile program, or regional proxy network. That resulted in an emboldened Islamic Republic, weakened American deterrence, diminished Israeli security, and the abandonment of earlier promises to stand with the Iranian people against their rulers.
The MoU is now dead, as many predicted it would be, with the United States resuming strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire over on July 8. If this new phase of the conflict is to produce a lasting strategic outcome, rather than another temporary pause, Washington must fundamentally reevaluate its approach to the Kurdish question. This means engaging the full spectrum of Iranian Kurdish opposition forces and defining a clear role for them in Iran’s political future.
The Kurdish Front That Never Was
In the first week of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump declared that he would “ be all for ” a Kurdish offensive against the Iranian regime. Yet Washington never converted that rhetorical support into a viable plan, in large part because it lacked a sufficient understanding of Iranian Kurdish capabilities and constrained its own options to accommodate the anti-Kurdish sensitivities of regional countries such as Turkey. The absence of a clearly defined and credible vision for Iran’s political endgame further ensured that the Kurdish front would not become an operational component of the campaign. All three of these hurdles can and should be overcome in the next phase.
Before the war started, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged President Trump to consider an Iranian Kurdish front as part of the broader war effort. Israeli intelligence assessed the various Iranian Kurdish organizations and secured the participation of groups like the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and Komala while deliberately excluding the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK). PJAK was left out over concerns that its involvement would provoke Turkish opposition and complicate the operation. According to reports , Mossad officers and senior commanders from KDPI and Komala spent weeks preparing a plan that envisioned Kurdish forces seizing the border cities of Kermanshah and Marivan in the opening stages of the campaign.
On March 1, President Trump talked with several Iranian Kurdish leaders based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), fueling speculation that their forces, based in camps in the region’s mountainous areas, might become the ground component of a broader campaign to weaken – or even topple – the Islamic Republic. It was initially unclear whether the president was referring to Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish forces, prompting the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which govern in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) – to immediately declare that they had no interest in fighting Iran. Their fear that the president’s confusing remarks had placed a target on their backs, however, proved well-founded. Within days, Iranian drones and missiles were striking both Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish targets across the KRI .
However, less than a week later, on March 7, President Trump said he did not want Kurdish fighters to join the war against Iran, essentially shelving the idea after reported pushback from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan . The president even went on to claim that the Kurds had taken weapons originally intended for the broader Iranian opposition, as if to blame them for the perceived ultimate failure of the Iran war. The statement quickly spread through both Kurdish and Iranian political circles despite the absence of any evidence whatsoever. Among Kurdish organizations, the accusation reinforced long-standing fears that they would once again be portrayed as unreliable partners whenever broader American objectives shifted. Among non-Kurdish Iranian opposition groups, it generated new suspicion regarding Kurdish intentions at precisely the moment greater coordination might have been possible. Rather than strengthening an already fragmented opposition movement, the episode deepened existing mistrust between its various components.
In a recent interview , Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged that Turkey had opposed any U.S. partnership with Kurdish groups against the Islamic Republic, laying bare the self-imposed constraints that defined Washington’s campaign. Although a PJAK official unexpectedly disputed this account , extensive reporting indicates that Turkish sensitivities did, in fact, play a decisive role in shaping the U.S. approach. President Trump claimed that he prevented Turkey from entering the war on Iran’s side. Yet Turkey still managed to shape the conduct of the American campaign in ways that ultimately favored Tehran. Rather than mobilizing every available source of pressure against Tehran, the United States accepted limits dictated by a regional ally whose priorities differed fundamentally from its own. Araghchi also reiterated Tehran’s warning that any insurgency launched from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq would be confronted. Both the KDP and PUK in Iraqi Kurdistan heeded that warning.
In an apparent effort to contain the fallout from President Trump’s repeated claims that the Kurds had stolen weapons, U.S. Presidential Envoy to Iraq Tom Barrack recently told Kurdish leaders that President Trump had been misinformed about the alleged weapons shipments, describing the claims as untrue and assuring them that the administration was working to correct the president’s understanding of the issue. However, the damage was done. For Tehran, the Trump administration’s mismanagement of the Iranian Kurdish dimension of the Iran conflict handed the regime a strategic victory with minimal effort.
What Washington Got Wrong About the Kurds
Contrary to the established parties of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Iranian Kurdish parties that had long struggled to cooperate formed an unprecedented coalition last year to coordinate their political and military efforts in anticipation of a rapidly changing Iran and in preparation for hostilities with the regime. However, from the earliest days of the war, it was evident that Washington’s inability to distinguish between Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish organizations was impeding the development of a coherent policy for integrating Kurdish political and military dynamics into its broader strategic objectives in Iran. While President Trump mentioned several times that the Kurds would enter the fray, he never once said which Kurds he was referring to – a distinction he also failed to make when accusing them of stealing weapons.
The Iran war also continued to underscore a deeper weakness in U.S. policy: Washington still approaches Kurdish politics primarily through the lens of neighboring states rather than Kurdish realities. There are several Iranian Kurdish parties that have been active for decades, each with different ideological traditions, military capabilities, and external relationships. Yet American (and even Israeli) engagement largely focused on organizations like the KDPI and Komala that were politically less objectionable to Ankara rather than those possessing the strongest military infrastructure inside Iran. Yet even this deference to Turkish sensitivities, exercised at the expense of U.S. strategic objectives, failed to secure Ankara’s sign-off .
The most obvious – and ultimately damaging – omission was PJAK, the most militarily experienced Kurdish force operating against Tehran. Because of its historical links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – and because PJAK remains subject to U.S. sanctions – Washington largely avoided engaging with it. The United States contemplated using Kurdish forces against Tehran while deliberately sidelining the very group most capable of fighting the Iranian regime. As a result, the Kurdish dimension of the campaign was effectively stillborn.
Ultimately, the Iranian Kurdish organizations that were engaged by the United States understood that launching a large-scale offensive into Iran would face stiff resistance and provoke severe retaliation from Tehran. Their vulnerability was already evident during the conflict: while most Iranian projectiles fired elsewhere in the region were intercepted by air defense systems , those targeting Kurdistan went largely unchallenged because the region lacked comparable defensive capabilities. An actual Kurdish operation against Iran would therefore have required assurances of sustained American military, political, and diplomatic support. Those assurances never came.
The second problem was political rather than military. Washington never articulated what a post-Islamic Republic Iran might look like. Would Iran remain centralized? Would ethnic minorities receive constitutional protections? Would Kurdish regions enjoy autonomy or decentralization? These questions are existential for Kurdish political movements that have fought the Iranian regime for decades. Asking Kurdish forces to assume enormous military risks without answering them was unlikely to produce enthusiastic participation.
In January 2026, Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria experienced what many Kurds across the region still regard as one of Washington’s most consequential betrayals. After years of serving as America’s principal partner against the Islamic State, Syrian Kurdish forces under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) found themselves exposed to a lightning offensive by the new government in Damascus led by former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters with tacit approval from the Trump administration. That experience inevitably shaped the calculations of Iranian Kurdish organizations. Few were prepared to commit themselves to an operation that could leave them confronting the Iranian state alone once Washington’s priorities shifted elsewhere.
Whatever direction American policy now takes, Kurdish resistance to the Islamic Republic is not going to end. However, unless Washington develops a coherent Kurdish strategy, the next phase against Iran will remain constrained by the same self-imposed limitations that blunted the last one. This would be a strategic mistake for the United States because without a capable force able to challenge the regime from within Iran, Tehran will retain the capacity to launch ballistic missiles, threaten the Strait of Hormuz, and ultimately rebuild its nuclear program.
Iran’s Kurdish regions have experienced decades of political repression, executions, economic marginalization, and military confrontation. Kurdish political organizations have survived multiple waves of state repression and have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to reorganize despite arrests, assassinations, and exile.
That enduring Kurdish opposition is why the Islamic Republic is already moving to reassert control over its Kurdish regions. In the last few weeks, clashes have occurred across western and northwestern Iran, including Paveh, Baneh, Marivan, and Mahabad, with Iranian security personnel reportedly killed in several incidents. IRGC-affiliated media described the attacks as “terrorist,” while Kurdish sources said the IRGC had launched operations around Mahabad that triggered fighting with PJAK’s armed wing. Separately, Iranian strikes killed nine members of the Iranian Kurdish group Komala near Sulaimaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The escalation suggests that Tehran, rather than being chastened by the war, is seeking to crush Kurdish opposition before it can organize more effectively.
If Washington intends to encourage political change inside Iran, it needs a coherent vision that begins with Kurdish political realities and extends beyond military operations. U.S. Kurdish policy is too often filtered through Washington’s relationships with Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Kurdish movements are assessed primarily according to how they affect other regional priorities rather than their own strategic importance. That approach may simplify the management of broader regional portfolios, but it not only consistently produces incomplete assessments of Kurdish capabilities and incentives but also undermines U.S. objectives. One way to remedy this would be for Washington to appoint a Special Envoy for Kurdish Affairs tasked with developing a coherent, cross-regional Kurdish policy that is integrated into broader U.S. strategy rather than subordinated to competing country portfolios.
Moreover, the United States requires sustained engagement with Iran’s diverse opposition, credible security guarantees for partners willing to assume extraordinary risks, and a clear political roadmap for the country after the Islamic Republic. Should hostilities resume, the United States should stop fighting with one hand tied behind its back and engage the most capable indigenous force able to complement its air campaign inside Iran, regardless of diplomatic sensitivities. This means engaging and coordinating with PJAK rather than continuing to sideline it.
Across Iraq, Syria, and now Iran, Kurdish movements have repeatedly discovered that they are considered indispensable tactical partners during periods of conflict but expendable political partners once negotiations with central governments begin. The MoU may have ended one phase of confrontation between Washington and Tehran but the grievances that drive Kurdish opposition to the Islamic Republic remain unresolved, as do the demands of many other marginalized communities across the country. If unrest returns – as many expect – it is likely that Kurdish organizations will again find themselves on the front lines. Washington should recognize that the Kurdish front is not peripheral to its Iran strategy, but central to any serious effort to pressure the Islamic Republic from within.