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Trump Seeks Kurdish Allies Against Tehran, but Analysts Say Plan Is Risky, Could Take Years
Iranian Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) take part in a training session at a base on the outskirts of Erbil, Iraq, Feb. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
The Trump administration, weighing whether the war with Iran could eventually require US troops on the ground, has begun reaching out to Kurdish opposition leaders in Iran with an offer of “extensive US aircover” as it looks for ways to destabilize the regime while the American-Israeli campaign intensifies, an idea one analyst told The Algemeiner would be very difficult to translate into action.
The outreach comes amid reports from Iran that it had preemptively attacked Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming the strikes caused heavy losses.
According to The Washington Post, which cited people familiar with the matter, US President Donald Trump held calls with Kurdish minority leaders in Iraq, including Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, as well as anti-regime Iranian Kurdish groups about taking control of areas in western Iran.
A senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said Washington asked Iraqi Kurdish authorities to “open the way and not obstruct” and to “provid[e] logistical support” to Iranian Kurdish groups mobilizing in Iraq.
“He told us the Kurds must choose a side in this battle — either with America and Israel or with Iran,” the anonymous official told the paper.
Trump himself on Thursday encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces to go on the offensive but did not indicate whether the US has been coordinating with them.
“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that; I’d be all for it,” the president told Reuters in an interview.
When asked if the US would provide air cover, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that,” but noted that the Kurds’ objective would be “to win.”
“If they’re going to do that, that’s good,” he added.
Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had information that “separatist groups” intended to breach its western borders for an attack.
“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” the ministry said, according to a statement published by the state-run IRNA news agency.
Accounts diverged Wednesday night over whether an Iranian Kurdish ground invasion had begun. Fox News said Kurdish militias based in Iraq had crossed into Iran, but Tasnim, Iran’s semi-official outlet, reported via Reuters that its journalists in three border provinces found no evidence of an incursion. Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, who initially cited a US official as confirming the operation, later said reports were “conflicting,” adding that a senior official in one Iranian Kurdish faction also denied that any offensive was underway.
Peshawar Hawramani, a spokesperson for the government in the federated Kurdistan region of Iraq, known as the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, has released a statement denying involvement in any incursions or armament.
“[A]llegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded,” Hawramani said, calling the reports “malicious.”
Reports that speak about a role of the Kurdistan Region and the allegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded. We categorically deny them and affirm that they are being published…
— Peshawa Hawramani (@PHawraman) March 5, 2026
The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat outlet reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, have pressed Iraqi officials for details about the phone calls between Trump, Barzani, and Talabani.
Iran also told Iraq’s federal authorities in Baghdad that it “must provide sufficient guarantees and take the necessary measures” to prevent Iraqi Kurdish groups from aiding Iranian opposition groups, the report said, citing unnamed sources.
Iran’s Kurdish population — estimated at roughly 8 million to 12 million people — lives largely in mountainous western provinces along the Iraqi border, where several armed opposition factions have long operated and where some Iranian Kurdish groups maintain bases across the frontier in northern Iraq.
The country’s Kurdish minority has a long history of political activism based on decades of rebellion against central rule, a dynamic that predates the Islamic Republic. Kurdish forces briefly established their own state in northwestern Iran, the Republic of Mahabad in 1946, before it was crushed, and Kurdish groups have periodically clashed with successive governments in Tehran ever since.
A day earlier, CNN reported that the CIA has been working for months with Iranian Kurdish groups to foment an uprising.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday: “None of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force. So, what other entities may be doing, we’re aware of, but our objectives aren’t centered on that.”
Northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region has long served as a rear base for Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but only so long as local leaders kept them from launching attacks into Iran. That delicate arrangement could unravel if fighters mobilize across the border as part of the wider war effort, said Seth Frantzman, a regional analyst who has studied Kurdish militant groups.
If Iranian Kurdish factions begin operating from Iraqi territory and the broader US-Israeli campaign fails to decisively weaken Tehran, Kurdish authorities in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah could find themselves exposed to retaliation from Iran, Frantzman said. Leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan “have tried for years to keep the balance” hosting Iranian Kurdish opposition groups while maintaining a working relationship with Tehran, he said.
Even if Washington were prepared to support Kurdish factions, turning them into an effective anti-regime force would take far longer than the current conflict timeline suggests.
Frantzman said any outside backing would take time to put in place, requiring logistics channels and training. “These types of programs, advising and assisting groups, or arming them, takes time,” he said, pointing to past US experiences from Afghanistan to Syria as examples.
Frantzman said Kurdish factions would be looking for assurances that outside support would last, wary of being pulled into an uprising only to be left exposed if backing fades and Tehran reasserts control.
“They would be very wary and skeptical of taking chances today, having already lost lives and lost territory,” he told The Algemeiner.
He pointed to several examples, most notably the US-backed Kurdish campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, when Washington trained and equipped Kurdish fighters to form the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015. The campaign, which took more than four years, required sustained support and came at a heavy cost, with about 11,000 fighters killed.
Even that effort, he noted, which targeted a terrorist group in a limited area rather than an established state, took over four years to complete. Any comparable attempt inside Iran — a country of roughly 90 million people with a far larger military and security apparatus — would be far more difficult.
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Forverts podcast, episode 8: Subway stories
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם אַכטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „די אונטערבאַן“.
אין דעם קאַפּיטל וועט איר הערן צוויי אַרטיקלען: משהלע אַלפֿאָנסאָס פּערזענלעכן עסיי „און אַלץ צוליב אַ יאַרמלקע!“ וואָס איר קענט אַליין לייענען דאָ, און אַ צווייטן אַרטיקל פֿון שׂרה־רחל שעכטער, „זכרונות פֿון אַן אונטערבאַן־פּאַסאַזשיר“, וואָס איר קענט לייענען דאָ.
צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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New York City Police Investigate Antisemitic Subway Assault
New York City Police Department (NYPD) vehicles are seen in Brooklyn, New York, United States. Photo: Kyle Mazza via Reuters Connect
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is investigating an antisemitic incident in which an African American male assaulted a Jewish public transit commuter on the subway, according to local reports.
The victim, Jeremy Garrett, told an ABC affiliate that he was reading a psalm on Monday morning when the assailant struck him on the head, knocking off his kippah in the process. Garrett later received treatment at a local hospital, WABC-TV reported.
“I thought the window of the subway fell on me,” Garrett recalled. “We tussled a bit, I was trying to hold him on the train, and then the doors closed, and they opened the doors again, and he ran off … it’s horrible because it happened on Purim, you know, right before the holiday.”
Garret added, “I still want justice, but I do forgive the man … They keep coming for us. We still keep living, so we’re not going to stop.”
New York City has seen similar incidents in recent months. In January, a woman was punched in the face while riding the New York City subway for wearing a hat that said “F—k Antisemitism,” according to a local report.
“F—k Jews,” the suspect, described as a “Black man in his 40s,” allegedly said to her before striking the blow, the New York Daily News reported, citing local law enforcement.
The victim then “fled” the railcar at the 116th St. – Columbia University subway station in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, while the assailant remained on board, the News added. She was reportedly not seriously injured, as medics did not treat her following the incident’s being reported to law enforcement.
Just last month, a 17-year-old student who attended the Renaissance Charter School in the Jackson Heights section of the Queens borough called on his classmates to “rise up and kill the Jews.”
Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City have seen a dramatic rise in recent years. The latest NYPD hate crime statistics show a 182 percent increase in January 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month in office, compared to the same period last year.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and refused to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Such positions have raised alarm bells among not only New York’s Jewish community but also Israeli business owners and investors, who fear a hostile climate under Mamdani’s leadership.
Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to other data issued by the NYPD.
A recent report released in December by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising a small minority of the city’s population.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitism in New York City has eroded the quality of life of the city’s Orthodox Jewish community, which is the target in many antisemitic incidents.
In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November 2024, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery. In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
In 2025, New Yorkers have seen organized antisemitic harassment. In November, hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent New York City synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.
“The Jewish community is filled with anxiety and trepidation. We know that it’s open season,” Rabbi Mark Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, said in a statement to NY1 in February. “We’ve encountered these kinds of threats for the last 2,500 years, but if anything, there’s never been a greater time to be alive as a Jew than today.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Gavin Newsom just confirmed the demise of the Democratic party’s support for Israel
“Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism,” said Louis Brandeis, American Jewish leader and Supreme Court justice, in 1915. “To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.”
For much of the next century, most American Jews stacked their liberalism on top of their patriotism on top of their Zionism. They overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic Party, and overwhelmingly supported both Israel and the United States-Israel alliance.
In recent years, however, many have found it increasingly difficult to deny is that support for Israel is, at present, hard to square with liberalism. And a statement this week by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the probable 2028 Democratic candidate for president, made clear exactly how profoundly that shift has changed the Democratic party.
Israel is discussed by some “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” Newsom said on a podcast, adding that the U.S. would likely have no choice but to reconsider its military aid to the Jewish state.
Given that Newsom is broadly a centrist, his words made a clear statement: Politicians understand that uncritical support for Israel is no longer compatible with the Democratic mainstream. Democratic voters are pushing politicians to, if not abandon Israel entirely, then at least condition their support for it. And the future of American Jews and the Democratic Party is now not only up to Democratic politicians who decide how much to give Israel and under what conditions.
It is also up to American Jews, who have to decide whether those politicians, in doing so, are moving away from their values, or bringing them back into alignment.
Shifting sympathies
A Gallup poll released last month found that Americans’ sympathies now lie more with Palestinians than with Israelis. Up until last year, the opposite had held true. For Democrats, whose sympathies already “flipped strongly” — per Gallup — to Palestinians in 2025, the difference is more stark: 65% said they sympathize more with Palestinians, while just 17% say they sympathize more with Israelis.
Those tempted to write the change off as the result of a party captured by a young far-left should consider that, last year, Pew found that 66% of Democrats over the age of 50 have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from just 43% in 2022. (For those ages 18 to 49, the number was 71%.) A full 73% of Democrats over 50 said they had “none at all” or “not too much” confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I have no doubt that some will say that the change is because people don’t understand the complexity of the situation in the Middle East; because they have forgotten the lessons of history; or because the Democratic Party is comfortable embracing antisemitism.
These claims ignore a simpler explanation: That the voters who are registered with the one major U.S. political party that still claims to care about liberalism, democracy, and human rights watched as Israel, by its own admission, killed some 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
They saw Israel’s leaders make it next to impossible for civilians in the Strip to receive necessary food and humanitarian aid. They see settler violence rising in the West Bank, including against American citizens, amid increased talk of annexation. They hear Netanyhau continue to insist that there can be no Palestinian state, and understand that the alternative he foresees is not one state with equal rights, but either a future of endless wars, or an undemocratic state in which Palestinians live under Israeli control without the rights of citizens.
In that context, many voters see that unflinching support for Israel is no longer in line with the values that drew them to their party. And since they cannot change Israel, they are trying to change their party.
No more cognitive dissonance
Democratic voters, in insisting that their politicians not walk in lockstep with Israel, are insisting that the party break its cognitive dissonance around Israel. Which means that the future of American Jews in the Democratic Party depends not only on how sensitively Democratic politicians navigate criticizing and checking Israel without elevating antisemitism. It also depends on whether American Jews are willing to admit this dissonance to ourselves.
For some, this is not an open question. There are American Jews who have no relationship to Israel, or whose relationship is an overwhelmingly critical one. Per last year’s Jewish Federations of North America National Survey, a combined 32% of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as either anti-Zionist or non-Zionist.
(Only 7% of American Jews overall consider themselves to be anti-Zionist, and just 8% say non-Zionist,. But most don’t subscribe to the label “Zionist,” either, with just 37% describing themselves as such).
In 2021, one poll of American Jews found that a quarter deemed Israel an apartheid state, well before Newsom likened it to one.
There’s also the reality that the vast majority of American Jews do not name Israel as their top issue when they go to the voting booth, and that the Republican Party is undergoing its own schism over Israel.
Still, that same JFNA poll found that most American Jews — 71% — do say that they feel emotionally attached to Israel. And 60% say that Israel makes them proud to be Jewish, even as 69% say that they “sometimes find it hard to support the actions taken by Israel or its government.”
What this means: For many American Jewish Democrats, encouraging politicians to break with Israel — or accepting that break is already in process — is likely more emotionally challenging than it is for American Democrats generally.
What Newsom’s comments show is that this is an emotional problem American Jewish voters will need to face sooner rather than later. Democratic voters are forcing Democratic politicians to resolve a disconnect, and they want it resolved quickly. The year is no longer 1915. Democratic American Jews are going to need to decide what it means to be “good Americans and better Jews.” If it can no longer involve being both liberal and staunchly pro-Israel, we will need to decide which of those items we find most important.
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