It was an ambitious plan—some would say almost absurdly so. A Kurdish invasion comprising of thousands of fighters crossing from Iraq into Iran, intended to liberate the Kurdish regions, home to eight million people, including tens of thousands of armed men. Together they were supposed to advance eastward, while simultaneously, armed militias of other minority groups would bite into Iranian territory from all directions, pushing all the way to Tehran.
The problem with Mossad operations, unlike military ones, is the lack of precedent to rely on. The pager operation surely also seemed fantastic—in the realm of pure fantasy—before it was executed. The reports indicating an Israeli attempt to drag President Trump into a doomed regional adventure ignore one critical fact: the CIA was also a full partner in the planning.
After all, the Kurdish parties are a lot like the Israeli opposition: five parties that do not speak to one another. The idea was to bring them all together on a shared platform, namely, toppling the despised Ayatollah regime. For the move to even be considered, the Kurds had to agree to a sort of “Seven Noahide Laws”: an agreement not to murder, not to loot, and above all—not to harm Iran’s territorial integrity. The IDF had already begun attacking Revolutionary Guard bases in the border area to clear the ground. One can only guess what weapons were placed at the Kurds’ disposal and from which front they arrived. In the Middle East, weapons you buy in the first act are sometimes turned against you in the third.
The plan is too good to be true, and for now, indeed, it isn’t. When Fox News reported that the attack was beginning, Turkish President Erdogan called Trump and, in a furious phone call, talked him out of the idea. It didn’t help that the party affiliated with the PKK, despised by the Turks, was not a partner in the move. In fact, two phone calls significantly slowed down the plans to topple the regime. The call from Erdogan halted the Kurdish offensive, and the call from the Emir of Qatar, following the strike on an Iranian energy facility, halted the continued destruction of the Revolutionary Guards’ economy.
Could the plan still materialize? Has the disruption of these plans soured relations between Washington and Jerusalem? Top officials deny this, claiming coordination is even tighter now than at the start of the campaign. Nevertheless, it seems the Kurds will have to keep warming up on the bench for a while longer.
