The author of this article, Sam Faddis, is a retired CIA under cover operative who spent much of his career in the Middle East. Nancy
Let’s Tell Some Truth About What Really Happened With The Supposed Plan To Arm The Kurds In Iran And Overthrow The Ayatollahs
According to the Jerusalem Post, a major plan to topple the Iranian regime using Kurdish forces, backed by Israeli air support, was all ready to go this spring, but Trump vetoed it at the last minute. Israeli sources are accusing Vice President J.D. Vance of leaking the entire operation to President Erdogan in Turkey (officially Turkiye). Vance is blamed for leaking information and thinking he knew better than the ‘seasoned strategists” in Israel who put together this “plan.”
J.D. leaked the plan. The Turks got angry. Trump killed the operation.
Great story, but it needs to be filed in the fiction section. Let’s talk about what really happened, according to our sources in Turkey.
The Israelis came up with a plan to arm an Iranian Kurdish group based in Northern Iraq and have them topple the Iranian regime. The group in question is called Komala. Its members are Communists. They have a camp near Sulaymaniah in Kurdistan. There may be, charitably, 500 fighters there. The group’s presence inside Iran is minimal. The suggestion that these guys were going to take on the Basij, the IRGC, and the Iranian army and win is laughable.
Komala is also penetrated thoroughly by Iranian intelligence. If you meet with a Komala representative, the report on your meeting is in Tehran before you can type it up and send it to Washington.
So, there was never any credible plan to use Komala to do anything inside Iran. This op was dead on arrival.
Now to the Turks…
The Turks have a massive intelligence presence in Kurdistan. The Turks fought a very long, very bloody war against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) inside Turkey. Maybe as many as a third of Turkish citizens are Kurds. The Turks remain very worried about any effort to build a Greater Kurdistan and pull pieces of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran into a new political entity.
If you are in Kurdistan, talking to anybody about arming Kurds to overthrow the Iranian government, Erdogan knows it. In fact, he knows you are coming before you get there and probably has a copy of the meeting notes compiled afterward. Keep in mind who you are dealing with. These are the heirs to the Ottomans, who themselves learned everything they knew about intrigue from the Byzantines.
The idea that the Vice-President of the United States would have to leak intel on this hair-brained Israeli plot to Erdogan is laughable.
So, let me tell you what I think is really going on.
The Vice-President is making some progress in getting the President to accept that the Israelis misled him about the prospects for regime change in Iran. The Israelis remain fixated on the idea that more of the same, i.e., more operations focused on attacking Iranian leadership and security forces, will somehow produce a popular uprising. The Israelis see things like funerals of senior Iranian leaders as targeting opportunities.
The Israelis continue to cling to the mistaken idea that the Iranian regime is about to fall. It just needs a little push. Five hundred Communist Kurds, many of whom haven’t been inside Iran for many years, ought to do the trick.
The President saw it was a dumb plan. He killed it. The weapons the Israelis sent, by the way, are still sitting in secure storage in Kurdistan waiting to be picked up.
Here is the reality. The brutal Iranian regime in Tehran is nowhere near falling. If you want it gone and you want a popular uprising, then you need to involve some professionals in this country, build a covert action campaign, keep its operations secure, and plan for the long haul.
There are a lot of other players in the region. If you start arming the Kurds, the Turks are going to lose their minds. Prepare for that and figure out how to manage it. If you start using Kurdistan as a base for ops inside Iran, the first people to feel the pain will be the Kurds, who have already suffered many missile and rocket attacks in response to their support for the United States. Sort out how to defend against that before you move.
Bottom line – either build a real covert action campaign or move on. This is not a business for wishful thinking and half measures.
And whatever we do, let’s stop listening to stupid stories like how Vice-President Vance saved the ayatollahs.
