Recent media reports suggesting the U.S. and Israel are considering support for Kurdish militant groups operating along Iran’s western frontier carry a disturbing echo for those of us who have spent years reporting from and on the region.
In 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush called on Iraqis to rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south heard the message. They believed the world’s most powerful military had signaled support for them.
They rebelled.
Shortly after, Saddam’s forces regrouped, and Iraqi helicopter gunships and armored units crushed the American-induced uprising. Tens of thousands were killed. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled toward the mountains and flooded across borders in scenes that shocked the world.
Some Western geopolitical gambles in the Middle East have been calculated risks. Others were more like reckless experiments that left entire societies shattered.
Too often, actions to empower ethnic or sectarian movements to weaken a hostile government fail to consider the broader chaos that is also unleashed. There is a moral weight to encouraging rebellion with life-and-death risks, a responsibility that policymakers often underestimate.
That’s the backdrop to the idea of arming the Kurds, which media reports suggest could be an effort to further destabilize or topple the regime in Tehran. Now imagine, amid our conflicting rationales for military action and evolving objectives, if an uprising were attempted inside Iran today.
There is a moral weight to encouraging rebellion with life-and-death risks, a responsibility that policymakers often underestimate.
Iran’s Kurdish population — several million people concentrated largely in the country’s northwest — has long faced political and economic marginalization under the Islamic Republic. For decades, Kurdish militant groups operating along with the rugged border with Iraq have periodically clashed with Iranian security forces.
In the context of the current military action, those internal tensions could swiftly escalate. Tehran has already signaled it would respond forcefully to any externally supported insurgency. Iran’s foreign minister said in an interview Thursday that “we are ready for them,” warning that Iran would confront armed Kurdish groups should they attempt to rise up.
That should not be dismissed as rhetoric. Iran’s security establishment has deployed overwhelming force against internal threats over the years. Iran has killed thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in recent months over dire political and economic conditions. Any Kurdish efforts to destabilize Iran would almost certainly provoke a swift and violent crackdown.
But the consequences would not be limited to Iran. One country that would be watching a Kurdish insurgency with alarm: Turkey.
For decades, Turkish officials have fought Kurdish militant movements they believe threaten the country’s territorial integrity. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched numerous military operations against Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria, even when those groups were receiving U.S. support in Washington’s fight against the Islamic State group and the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey — a NATO ally — views armed Kurdish movements as terrorists, whether they are in Iran, Syria, Iraq or inside Turkey’s own borders. If Kurdish fighters inside Iran suddenly gained foreign backing, Turkish leaders might interpret that as an expansion of Kurdish militancy across the region. That perception alone could trigger new military confrontations beyond Iran’s borders.
But the more troubling question is whether instability in Iran has become part of the strategic calculation.
In the recent history of the Middle East, the collapse of central authority in countries from Libya to Yemen to Syria did not lead to stability or democracy. Instead, those states fragmented into battlegrounds for militias, foreign powers and proxy wars. Millions of people have paid the price. The implication is stark: What happens to Iran in the long run may not be America’s or Israel’s primary concern. After all, President Donald Trump said Friday that he doesn’t care if Iran doesn’t become democratic. He would be open to Iran retaining a religious leader, Trump said, so long as he can choose that person. Such assertions dispel any notion that the U.S. is seeking to establish a secular, democratic Iran that represents all of its citizens. The implication is stark: What happens to Iran in the long run may not be America or Israel’s primary concern. Equally important in the strategic calculus is that Iran is not a small state whose collapse would remain contained. It is a country of more than 90 million people, with deep ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. If its central government were to fracture — whether along Kurdish, Arab or Baloch lines — with no clear alternative, the consequences would ripple across the region. Energy markets would be shaken; refugees would surge into neighboring countries, which in turn could be drawn into new proxy conflicts. The Middle East would inherit yet another fractured state. Twenty-five years ago, after Saddam crushed the Kurdish uprising, the U.S. intervened with humanitarian aid and helped establish a no-fly zone that began to fracture Iraq along ethnic lines while establishing an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. For many Kurds, the enduring memory is not the later protection but the initial U.S. abandonment. Meanwhile, Saddam remained in power for 10 more years, terrorizing his people. Perhaps the architects of Western strategies understand the risks. Perhaps what some policymakers ultimately seek is not a stable, democratic Iran but a broken one. Fomenting an insurgency is one thing. Living with the disastrous consequences is something else entirely.
Ayman Mohyeldin is a host of "‘The Weekend: Primetime" and an MS NOW political analyst. 
