Iranian Kurdistan

Overview

Iranian Kurdistan is the part of Kurdistan within western Iran. It is inhabited principally by Kurds and adjoins the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a distinct political entity across the border. Iranian Kurdistan is a geographic and cultural region, not an Iranian administrative province with those boundaries. Its cities include Mahabad, a center of modern Kurdish political history, and Sanandaj and Marivan, where Kurdish opposition movements have developed strong local ties. Kurds made up about 10 percent of Iran’s population in 2016 and were its third-largest ethnic group. Iranian Kurdish parties have sought political recognition, regional self-rule and democratic reforms for generations. Their programs differ, but demands for federalism or self-rule within Iran do not themselves amount to a program to break up the country.^[2]

The region has been a recurring center of resistance to Iran’s central government. Kurdish parties established the short-lived Republic of Mahabad in 1946. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, fighting between the new Islamic Republic and Kurdish parties drove several organizations into exile in Iraqi Kurdistan. Iranian Kurdistan again became central to nationwide politics in 2022, when protests following the death of Mahsa Zhina Amini began in Iran’s Kurdistan province and spread across the country. Its western mountains also have military importance: they provide routes and strongholds for Kurdish opposition groups, while Iran’s ruling regime uses the terrain for protected missile and drone infrastructure.^[1][3]

Geography

Iranian Kurdistan extends across Kurdish-inhabited parts of western Iran rather than following the borders of a single province. The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan’s traditional support base is Mukriyan, including Mahabad, Bokan, Sardasht and Oshnavieh. Komala developed support around Sanandaj and Marivan. PJAK has operated in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces and in Kurmanji-speaking areas around Urmia. These different areas help explain why Kurdish political organization has taken several forms instead of gathering around one city or party. Mahabad’s place in the northwest gives it particular historical weight, while Sanandaj and nearby towns have repeatedly been centers of protest and political mobilization.^[1][2]

The borderland connects communities in Iran with those in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Its rugged mountains have allowed Kurdish opposition movements to operate, maintain ties with local communities and establish bases across the border. The Qandil Mountains have long been a stronghold for both PJAK and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). That geography also exposes Iraqi Kurdistan to pressure from Tehran: Iranian Kurdish parties based around Erbil and Sulaymaniyah remain within reach of Iranian missiles and drones. For the Iranian regime, the same western terrain offers protected sites for military facilities and a corridor for systems capable of reaching Israel. Geography therefore shapes both local Kurdish politics and Iran’s wider military posture.^[1][2][4]

Jewish history

Jewish communities formed part of Iranian Kurdistan’s population for generations. Before the Kurdish Jewish exodus of 1950–51, Jews lived in 19 communities in Iranian Kurdistan, compared with 146 in Iraqi Kurdistan and 11 in Turkish Kurdistan. An unofficial Jewish Agency estimate placed the Jewish population across Iranian Kurdistan between 15,000 and 20,000 in 1948. These communities belonged to the wider history of Iranian Jews and the history of the Jews in Kurdistan, which crossed modern state borders.^[7]

Their history also reflects broader changes affecting Iran’s Jews in the twentieth century. Reza Shah’s reign brought periods of relative economic opportunity for Jews and other non-Muslim communities, while restrictions on political and social activity complicated Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. The upheavals surrounding the establishment of Israel and the early 1950s were followed by the departure of many Kurdish Jews from their longstanding communities. The 1948 Jewish Agency estimate captures the scale of Jewish life in Iranian Kurdistan immediately before that migration.^[7]

Modern history

Kurdish demands for recognition and regional autonomy developed as the modern Iranian state took shape in 1925. In 1945, Kurdish activists established the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), whose enduring base lay in Mukriyan. The party advocates a federal and democratic Iran, linking Kurdish political rights to a wider restructuring of the state. Its history is closely associated with Mahabad, where Iranian Kurdish political groups established the Republic of Mahabad in 1946. The republic lasted less than a year. Soviet military presence and support were decisive to its formation, while its leader Qazi Muhammad pursued Kurdish self-government in an area that Iran’s central state had effectively abandoned. The republic’s brief existence made Mahabad a lasting reference point for Kurdish politics in Iran.^[1][2]

Kurdish students and intellectuals in Tehran founded the Komala Party in 1969. Komala built a support base around Sanandaj and Marivan and adopted a program of secular democracy and Kurdish self-rule within a unified Iran. It later divided into branches with different leadership and political approaches. Branches based in Sulaymaniyah included Ibrahim Alizadeh’s Iranian Communist Party and Abdullah Mohtadi’s Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan. The PDKI and Komala thus share a demand for Kurdish political rights while retaining distinct histories, constituencies and programs.^[1][3]

The 1979 revolution opened a new confrontation between Kurdish parties and the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for jihad against Kurdish parties that year. Subsequent fighting defeated the parties’ efforts to secure self-rule, and several established themselves in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan during the 1980s. From those bases, they maintained political and community links inside Iran. The Islamic Republic continued to deny Kurdish demands for rights and repress Kurdish political activity. The exile of armed parties also made their presence in Iraq a persistent source of tension among Tehran, Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government.^[1][2]

The Kurdistan Free Life Party, known as PJAK, emerged from the PKK’s political orbit in the late 1990s and began intermittent armed operations against the Iranian regime in 2004. PJAK adopted the PKK’s democratic confederacy ideology and shared longstanding strongholds with it in the Qandil Mountains, although PJAK maintained that it operated independently. The Obama administration designated the PKK-affiliated PJAK a terrorist organization in 2009. PJAK reached a ceasefire agreement with Iran in 2011 and renewed armed struggle in 2016. Its areas of operation have included Kermanshah, Ilam and Kurmanji-speaking areas around Urmia. Other groups, including the Kurdistan Freedom Party, have also carried out armed actions; its fighters attacked Iranian security forces during an army parade near Sanandaj on April 19, 2016.^[1][11]

Iranian Kurdish parties have also relied on strikes and demonstrations. The Cooperation Center of Iranian Kurdistan’s Political Parties, bringing together Komala and the PDKI, called for both early in the movement that followed Mahsa Zhina Amini’s death in 2022. Opposition groups mobilized shopkeepers to close their stores during general strikes. Those closures showed continued support for Kurdish parties in Iranian Kurdistan, while their leaders emphasized civil resistance amid the regime’s efforts to portray Kurdish protesters as violent separatists. Kurdish women’s activism had a longer local history: activists established a “Women and Life” committee in 2003, nearly two decades before the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” spread across Iran.^[3]

Security

The Iranian regime treats Iranian Kurdistan as both a domestic security frontier and a site for regional military infrastructure. Protected missile facilities, drone bases and hardened military positions in its western mountains support operations beyond the region. Missile and drone systems based in western Iran can reach Israel. At the same time, the regime’s military presence helps it monitor Kurdish areas and suppress unrest. The mountains that protect state facilities have also enabled opposition groups to move and maintain local connections, making control of the terrain a continuing concern for Tehran.^[2][10]

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has repeatedly struck Iranian Kurdish opponents across the Iraqi border. On September 8, 2018, it hit PDKI headquarters in northern Iraq with missiles, killing 11 people. Iran then demanded that Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government extradite Iranian Kurdish opponents and close their bases. During the 2022 protests, the regime attacked opposition parties with assassinations, drones and missiles. The cross-border campaign placed party members and nearby civilians in the Kurdistan Region at risk. In 2023, Baghdad, Erbil and Tehran signed a security agreement addressing armed Iranian Kurdish parties based in Iraq. Following the agreement, parties based around Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, apart from PJAK, largely moved armed personnel away from the Iraq–Iran border.^[5][8]

Pressure on Kurdish political life also operates through Iran’s courts and detention system. In 2023, an Iranian court sentenced Kurdish Sunni cleric Seyyed Seyfollah Hosseini to 17 years in prison and 74 lashes over his membership in the Kurdistan Quran School. Authorities sentenced Saleh Nikbakht, lawyer for Mahsa Zhina Amini’s family, to one year in prison for propaganda against the regime. Human rights reporting described the deaths of Kurdish Iranian detainees Mousa Esmaeili and Peyman Galvani in a Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Orumiyeh, alongside the continued disappearance of four detained Komala members at the end of 2023. These cases formed part of the wider repression accompanying the regime’s confrontation with Kurdish dissent.^[6]

Security disputes across the border are tied to wider relations between Iran and the Kurdistan Region. Tehran established political and economic relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in 2003 and opened a consulate in Erbil. It nevertheless applied heavy pressure to cancel the Kurdistan Region’s September 2017 independence referendum. Weeks after the vote, Iraqi forces and Iranian regime-backed militias attacked Kurdish forces and seized territory and oil resources previously under the regional government’s control. Peshmerga withdrew from Kirkuk after Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leaders reached an agreement with Baghdad under Iranian auspices following Qasem Soleimani’s visit. Tehran has maintained close relations with that party and Iraq’s central government, while often clashing politically with the Kurdistan Democratic Party governing from Erbil. Such ties have not ended Iranian pressure on the Kurdistan Region or attacks on Iranian Kurdish opponents based there.^[15]

Present day

The Mahsa Amini protests began in Iran’s Kurdistan province after the death of Mahsa Zhina Amini in 2022 and spread nationwide. “Women, Life, Freedom,” adopted across the movement, came from Kurdish resistance. General strikes in Iranian Kurdistan linked the uprising to longstanding Kurdish political organization, while the breadth of protests brought those demands into a national movement. More than half of protesters killed during the uprising came from Kurdish and Baluch areas of Iran. The regime’s response showed that Kurdish areas remained particularly vulnerable when unrest challenged central authority.^[3][6]

During Israel’s strikes on Iran, major Iranian Kurdish opposition parties condemned the Islamic Republic but approached calls for immediate regime change cautiously. Their concern was rooted in earlier crackdowns: after a ceasefire, they feared that authorities would again punish Kurdish areas for events beyond their control. Their caution did not signal support for the regime. Kurdish movements continued to seek political rights and a more decentralized Iran while weighing the danger that renewed conflict or a transition could bring another military campaign against their communities.^[1][2]

On February 22, 2026, five Iranian Kurdish opposition groups announced a coalition against the regime in Tehran. It brought together the PDKI, PJAK, the Kurdistan Freedom Party, the Khabat Organization and one Komala branch; two other Komala branches stayed outside it. Reza Pahlavi condemned “several separatist groups” after the coalition formed, prompting criticism from Komala leader Abdullah Mohtadi. The disagreement reflected a central question in Iranian opposition politics: whether Kurdish demands for federalism and democratic self-rule within Iran would be recognized on their own terms. On February 26, the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kata’ib Hezbollah warned the Kurdistan Region against cooperation with “hostile foreign forces” as Iranian Kurdish groups remained based there.^[4]

Cross-border attacks continued in 2026. In March, the IRGC struck three Iranian Kurdish opposition groups operating in Iraqi Kurdistan, and an Iranian regime defense official threatened much broader attacks on March 6 if their activities continued. The Kurdistan Region reported a sustained campaign of missiles and drones from Iran and Iranian-backed militias after Israeli and American strikes on the regime began on February 28. Iranian forces struck the region again on the night of September 1–2, including a camp near Erbil housing families of Iranian Kurdish dissidents. These attacks underscored how Iranian Kurdistan’s political struggle extends across the border, even as its principal demands concern the rights and government of Kurds within Iran.^[2][4]