Posted on 03/08/2026 6:58:47 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
US President Donald Trump said Saturday he didn’t want Kurdish fighters from Iraq to join the war against Iran, after previously expressing support for the idea.
“I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran… They’re willing to go in, but I’ve told them I don’t want them to go in… The war is complicated enough as it is… We don’t want to see the Kurds get hurt or killed,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, after attending the return of the bodies of the six American soldiers killed in the conflict with Iran.
The US leader spoke as the US-Israeli war against Iran entered a second week.
On Thursday, Trump had said he’d welcome Kurdish involvement, saying: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.” He was also reported to have discussed the
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
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Not sure why except perhaps the path isn’t quite ready yet
Turkey said no.
> We don’t want to see the Kurds get hurt or killed <
That’s probably just a small part of the real reason. My guess about the rest: The Kurds want their own country. And that includes a slice of western Iran. That would obviously be destabilizing.
Hmm… Trump has good intentions. But maybe he should have thought this through a little more.
What about that part of the world is not destabilizing?
Good to hear.
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a Tuffet
Showing the Kurds their way....
I believe the US has promised Turkey that they won’t facilitate the Kurds getting their own country. This would give them a base to attack Turkey. Turkey is a building built on sand. It looks strong, but the foundation sits on a lot of ethnic fault lines.
Having said that, if the Kurds want to get involved there is nothing the US or anyone else can do to stop them.
The whole Kurds/Turkey balancing act has been hugely problematic for the US. We used the Kurds in the Forever War. They bled for us and I don’t think they received what they were promised...because of our relationship with Turkey.
Another issue is US policy regarding the Kurds very much depends on who sits in the Oval office. This must be frustrating for the Kurds.
If not the Kurds on the ground, who then? Us. and/or the Israelis? It sure would be nice if one of those huge Middle East lands would help us fight a war near their territory.
I’m thinking of Saudi Arabia. They also need to start absorbing some of these Muslim “refugees” that nobody wants.
So what’s left? Seems like Trump and Bibi should declare victory and wrap things up.
It’s the Iraqi Kurds that Trump and the Iranians don’t want to invade. It would be too divisive.
There are elements of the Iraqi Kurds that want to break off the area where there are a substantial number of Kurds into a new nation for Kurds. The majority of Iranian Kurds, and the non-Kurds in the area, want to remain Iranian.
To simplify, there are three major populations to deal with in Iran:
And we should keep in mind: Kurds overall are Leftist oriented, and a large percentage of them, perhaps even a majority, are Communist leaning. There is a reason our government has allied with them as an expediency against various Arab nations, particularly Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and then immediately distanced ourselves from them by NOT supporting them once there was no longer a military or strategic need for them. That isn't just a coincidence, IMO.
That said, I believe that we don’t know how, when, or even if the regime change will work.
But "Regime Change" isn't really the point. The point was to buy time for the world to deal with the possibility of a belligerent Iran that has used violence of ALL kinds becoming a Nuclear Power. That is it.
The way I see it, we have degraded their military to nothing. They will have to rebuild their navy.
We have destroyed their top leadership, many levels down. There are always beady-eyed thugs who are ready to move up to take their place, but that is ongoing.
We have destroyed their stores of weapons. It will take time and money to replace those.
We have crippled their nuclear weapons production. They have the know-how and can rebuild again, but that takes time.
The bottom line of all this is that we have purchased time. It will be at least 5-10 years before Iran becomes a serious threat to the region militarily, and if regime change doesn’t occur, the Islamic leadership is going to have bigger fish to fry than exporting their terror and paying off their terror proxies to do their dirty work for them...they are going to have hyperinflation and 90 million citizens whose lives, without regime change, are going to become increasingly restless and hostile to their leadership with no jobs in the oil industry, and not enough defense industry running at any time to employ meaningful numbers.
As for terrorism, they will still get ideological, starry-eyed Islamists who will kill themselves for Allah, and we will suffer casualties at home and abroad, which we should be prepared for. We must accept that risk over a nuclear armed Iran.
I may be wrong, but I believe we have left the Kharg Island facilities intact. Barring an oil pipeline to Russia, if Kharg Island is destroyed, that would take them years to rebuild, and they will have ZERO access to foreign hard currency to rebuild their navy and the rest of their military, to buy off and support the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, and carry the fight to us and our allies both here and in the Middle East.
If we have terrorist attacks that we can trace back to them or their influence, we can simply destroy the Kharg Island facility, or better yet, totally incapacitate it by mining it with modern mines that Iran will have great difficulty removing. We can activate or deactivate them at will, as they won’t be like the great big WWII era mines that Iran itself was so fond of dispensing into the waters indiscriminately.
But I suspect they are leaving those Kharg Island facilities intact in the event regime change does occur.
No matter how it turns out, we have lessened the threat of a nuclear armed and belligerent Iran, and time is what we need.
And Thank God we have a President with the backbone to buy us that time.
Then the whole of Iraq might want to get involved. They hate the Kurds.
> No matter how it turns out, we have lessened the threat of a nuclear armed and belligerent Iran, and time is what we need. <
Good analysis. My fear (perhaps unwarranted) is that Trump will give in to mission creep.
That fear will prove unjustified if no American ground troops are committed.
I think you are justified in that concern, but honestly, I don’t think that will happen, that Trump will succumb to mission creep.
Being a real estate developer in New York in the past, I’ll bet he has a fine tuned nose for excessive mission creep and hates it.
That is a real problem in development, from what I know of it.
“After initially voicing support, Trump says he doesn’t want Kurds to enter Iran war”
Likely meaning that the Kurds told him thanks, but no thanks. Not a good sign...
If the Kurds attacked western Iran to establish the beginning og “Kurdistan”, the Turks would immedeatly attack them at their rear. That would result in Israel, who no doubt promised air support for a Kurdish offensive, the necessity to attack Turkish troop formations. No doubt a Kurdish offensive would stress and destabalize the Iranian regime, but a wider war involving Turkey would be an even worse disaster and entanglement for the United States. As predicted regime change in Iran will only occur with American boots on the ground and American casualties. This entanglement will be a political disaster for Trump, the Republicans and America. The lunatic, demonic Democrats will come to power in 2026 and 2028.
per the Treaty of Sevres, Kurds were promised their state - but world reneged. i hope DJT’s statement is a misdirection to bypass Turkey the bully and to protect them. they could be very helpful in getting weapons to Iranian citizenry. we have abused them too much. they can be helpful - and we can negotiate some autonomy for them along the way. we owe them no less.
An element of payback amongst the Kurds? Sounds like too much for us to juggle. Senator Biden wanted an independent Kurdistan once. Anybody here think it’s in our interests to have them all fighting amongst themselves? I do for one reason: they’re all crazy.
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