Kurdish Iranian opposition in Iraq ready to take over, but not yet, as Trump backs off threats

In the mountains of northern Iraq, just 30 miles from the Iranian border, CBS News met Thursday morning with fighters — mostly women — of an armed Kurdish Iranian opposition group that says it is ready to confront and help topple the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers.

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) is banned as a terrorist group internally Iran and settled in exile across the border in Iraq. He has been training for years for the day when the Iranian regime can be removed from power. But as President Trump appears to be backing away from threats of U.S. military intervention on behalf of Iranian protesters, a Kurdish faction leader told CBS News that the time is not yet right.

President Trump said Wednesday that he heard on “good authority” that “killing in Iran is stopping” and that “there is no plan to kill” in the country. followed by a brutal attack ending two weeks of widespread protests. Sources inside Iran told CBS News that Iranian authorities are under attack it may have killed more than 12,000 peopleand probably many others.

His remarks appeared to signal a retreat from repeated warnings of unspecified US intervention to protect protesters, and a threat on Tuesday. ordering “stronger actions” if Iran protesters hanged themselves.

That may not have been the signal from Washington that the PDKI soldiers training on the Iraqi border were hoping for.

Commander Sayran Gargoli told CBS News that the protests have given them hope that the repressive regime that came to power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution may finally be overthrown, but only “if the people protesting in the street get international help.”

PDKI leader Mustafa Hijri has lived in exile for more than four decades, and has watched as Iran’s rulers have unleashed multiple rounds of mass violence. Since recent protests seem to have the same fate, he said he could not say for sure whether this uprising could be significant.

“It depends on whether the widespread killing will continue or not. If it continues, the protesters will certainly not be able to continue. On the other hand, there are other possible situations, such as the United States entering into negotiations with the mullahs’ regime and forcing them to accept their conditions. In this case, the regime will be able to extend its presence for some time.”

He said he hopes for US intervention, and in particular, strikes in Iran “attacking the institutions of the repressive forces that shoot people in the streets, and their so-called ‘justice’ institutions that work for the government. We want to see those institutions gone.”

“The majority of people in Iran are unhappy with this regime, and they are against it,” Hijri said.

But in the absence of such help from abroad, Hijri told CBS News that sending PDKI troops to the border — and calling in thousands of troops who say the group is lurking inside the country — could backfire badly.

“I believe that it is no longer helping the protesters now that the soldiers return to the country, because it has become a good excuse for the government to kill people,” he said. “That’s why we haven’t reached the time to make such a decision. But when the day comes, and we come to the conclusion that the return of our peshmerga [Kurdish] force will not be an additional reason to suppress the protesters, so we can do that.”

Hijri said the PDKI wants the Kurds, who make up about 10% of Iran’s population, and other ethnic minorities to be allowed to live “under democratic rule, and for their children to be allowed to learn in their own languages, and for the government to legally recognize” their right to do so.

The opposition fighters, Hijri said, “are trained, and they are there, ready when the party needs them.”

But with Iran’s hard-line leaders seemingly surviving another major challenge to their hold on power, at least for now, the PKDI, and the millions of Iranians still inside the country, can continue to wait.