When the Kurds fought ISIS, the West watched with sympathy. Now, at the center of the Iranian equation, there is a concrete opportunity for the Kurds, and this time, sympathy is not enough.
On February 22, 2026, five Iranian Kurdish parties gathered under a single coalition framework in Erbil, Iraq. The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the Khabat Organization, and Komala, movements from different political traditions and at times with tense relations among themselves, announced the alliance known as The Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan after eight months of negotiations.
The objectives were clear: the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, the right to self-determination, and the establishment of a democratic governance structure in Rojhilat – Iranian Kurdistan. It was an unprecedented step in Kurdish political history.
Why does it matter? To understand that, one must look at Erbil and the cycle of failure that has played out there for 30 years.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has, since 1991, been the only Kurdish political structure to establish an institutional presence recognized on the international stage. It has oil revenues, its own armed forces, and functioning diplomatic channels.
Yet across three decades, it failed to resolve one fundamental problem: political and military unity. The Barzani and Talabani lines – representing the rival Kurdish powers of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – at every critical juncture, pursued separate channels with different external actors.
Encouraging Kurdish unity
Western powers, including the United States and major European capitals, spent decades encouraging Kurdish unity, at times with indirect financial support.
Nothing changed. Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq maintained separate security structures, separate foreign policy tracks, and strategic reflexes that periodically undermined each other.
The direct consequence of this structural deadlock is well known: the Kurds remained strong in the field and weak at the table. Who speaks authoritatively? Which channel is binding? Without clear answers to these questions, building a long-term partnership with Kurdish actors, whether from Washington or Jerusalem, has always carried a fundamental credibility problem.
The situation of the Rojhilat parties is both similar and different. Most of these movements carry decades, in some cases nearly eighty years, of political and organizational experience. The PDKI traces its legitimacy to the Mahabad Republic.
PAK gained combat experience fighting ISIS alongside the Peshmerga (internal security forces of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq). The Kurdish society of western Iran possesses one of the most deeply rooted national consciousnesses in the region; generations of systematic repression did not erode it, but they consolidated it.
But these movements face a severe structural constraint. Forced to base their operations on Iraqi Kurdistan territory, the Rojhilat parties have long paid the indirect price of the KRG’s careful balancing act with Tehran.
The KRG, bound by economic and security ties to Iran, has avoided an open confrontational posture. This dynamic was formalized in the 2023 security agreement between Baghdad and Tehran, under which Iraq committed to disarming and relocating Kurdish opposition groups from border areas.
The result: organizational experience and institutional memory remained intact, but military capacity was systematically constrained over the years.
This raises the critical question. What changes if external support is provided?
An important distinction must be made here. Similar arguments were made about Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, and in both cases, expectations were not met. What separates Rojhilat from those precedents is the absence of an institutional vacuum.
The coalition parties have social roots, clandestine networks inside Iran, and organizational memory that cannot be improvised. The general strike observed across 39 cities and towns in Iranian Kurdistan in January 2026 demonstrated a mobilization capacity with real resonance on the ground. This is not an externally constructed structure waiting for outside support to give it life. It is an internally grown force waiting to be recognized.
Western Iran is extremely rugged terrain. This is both an advantage and a constraint: favorable for defensive resistance, but presenting serious difficulties for rapid logistics and equipment supply.
Sustaining territorial gains in such geography requires air support and effective protection against Iranian missiles and drones. These are not abstract considerations; they are operational necessities. And today, no institutional relationship exists with either the United States or Israel to address them. As PJAK co-chair Peyman Viyan stated plainly in February 2026, the coalition currently has no formal relations with Washington or Jerusalem.
This potential must not be overstated. As it stands, the coalition is a political declaration, not an operational unity. Whether PJAK can act as a genuinely independent actor within this framework remains uncertain; its ideological proximity to the PKK line represents the most fragile link within the coalition.
Turkey will work to obstruct this structure, through pressure on the KRG and through its own channels, and Ankara has both the motivation and the tools to do so. Much of the leadership has spent decades in exile; their capacity to mobilize on the ground has yet to be tested at scale.
Taken together, these realities point to a clear conclusion. This coalition is not, on its own, a decisive force. But if the United States and Israel provide active coordination, equip these movements with modern capabilities, and keep a firm hand on the process, it can generate meaningful momentum that deepens the fragility of the Iranian regime.
That is not a small thing.
This gap reflects neither Kurdish weakness nor Western indifference alone. It is the product of a structural disconnect accumulated across administrations.
Every US administration has placed short-term Iran policy calculations ahead of building a relationship with Kurdish actors. Even as Iran struck Kurdish positions in Iraq in 2022, Washington did not move beyond rhetorical sympathy.
And the Trump administration’s shifting signals toward the Kurds deepened the uncertainty rather than resolving it.
Yet the conditions today are different. The institutional fragility of the Iranian regime is no longer theoretical; it is observable. The coalition parties have declared political unity through eight months of negotiation, established a joint diplomatic committee, and committed to a unified command structure.
This is precisely the step that Erbil could never take across three decades, now being attempted under different conditions, in a different geography, by movements that had no alternative but to build inward.
For the United States and Israel, the question is not simply about gaining an ally. It is about building a genuine strategic relationship with actors who are strong in the field, aligned with Western values, secular in orientation, and locally legitimate. The precondition for that relationship is recognition, not as an instrument, but as a subject. And that recognition must take concrete form: contribution to institutional capacity, coordinated political messaging, and a consistent channel of engagement.
Thirty years of Erbil delivered one lesson: external encouragement cannot substitute for internal will. But those same thirty years demonstrated something equally important: internal will, without a clear external partnership, hits its own ceiling.
Rojhilat may be the first place where both conditions are present simultaneously. That window should not be left to close on its own.