Iraqi Kurdish officials rejected any role in anti-Iran combat operations on Thursday following days of disputed media reports that the United States and Israel plan to arm Kurdish groups against the Islamic Republic.
The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq said that it was “not part of any campaign to expand the war and tensions in the region.”
“Reports that speak about a role of the Kurdistan Region and the allegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded,” the government wrote on its official account.
“We categorically deny them and affirm that they are being published deliberately and maliciously,” it added.
Iraq’s first lady, Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed, who is Kurdish and the aunt of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party leader Bafel Talabani, wrote an emotional plea on Thursday to “leave the Kurds alone.”
“In 1991, the Kurds were urged to rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein, only to be abandoned when priorities changed,” she wrote. “No one came to our defense when the regime deployed helicopter gunships and tanks to crush the uprising. Those memories remain vivid and etched in our minds.”
“Today, the Kurds of Iraq have finally tasted a measure of stability and dignity in life,” she wrote. “Because of this, it is very difficult, indeed impossible, for Kurds to accept being treated as pawns by the world’s superpowers.”
“I appeal to all sides involved in this conflict. Leave the Kurds alone,” she wrote. “We are not guns for hire.”
CNN reported on Tuesday that the CIA is working to arm Kurdish groups to foment an uprising against the Iranian government.
Citing an unnamed U.S. official, Fox News reported on Wednesday that thousands of Iraqi Kurds launched a ground offensive into Iran.
Kurdish officials in Iraq denied that report.
“Not a single Iraqi Kurd has crossed the border,” wrote Aziz Ahmad, deputy chief of staff to the Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. “This is patently false.”
An official from PJAK, an armed Kurdish insurgent group inside Iran, also reportedly denied that it had launched a new operation against Iran.
About 10 million Kurds live in Iran, mostly in the northwestern border region with Iraq, out of Iran’s total population of 90 million.
Many Kurdish militia groups operating in Syria, Turkey and Iran have a presence in the relatively safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan. Some of those groups, like the PKK, have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States and other countries, and Kurdish groups are frequently at odds with one another politically.
