di Tural Akhundov– ResearchFellow presso Crescent Research Center – Baku
On February 28, the Israeli government succeeded in drawing the United States into an open military confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This time, both sides seem to be much better prepared compared to the 12-day war a year ago. That might also explain the higher intensity, the wider scope of countries and targets being hit, and the scale of damage in general.
Faced with the uncertainty created by the ‘fog of war’, Israel, which regards the Islamic Republic as an existential threat, is pushing for a swift and desirable result. Options on the table could range from a redesign of Iran’s foreign policy to full territorial fragmentation. This ambiguity appears deliberate, allowing both the USA and Israel to keep their strategic options open. When it comes to the partition of Iran, two of its biggest minorities must always be mentioned: Azerbaijanis and Kurds.
The ethnic map of Iran has circulated online for years, often portraying Persians as a minority and hinting that the country is ripe for breakup. In practice, minority attitudes toward the Islamic Republic vary considerably. Sunni Kurdish communities tend to harbor the deepest grievances, against both the regime and Iranian identity as such, while Azerbaijanis remain more or less integrated into the state framework.
The Kurdish question, however, extends well beyond Iran’s borders. An estimated 25 to 35 million Kurds are spread across four countries, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, making them one of the world’s largest stateless peoples. Iranian Kurds refer to their region as Rojhilat, meaning “the East,” a term that situates it within the broader Kurdish national imagination alongside Bashur (Iraqi Kurdistan), Bakur (southeastern Turkey), and Rojava (northern Syria). This framing matters: for Kurdish nationalists, Rojhilat is not merely an Iranian province but an integral part of a future Greater Kurdistan, a concept that carries deep political weight and, in neighboring countries and communities, considerable anxiety.
It comes as little surprise, then, that Israel is reportedly backing Iranian Kurdish armed groups operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan, and that President Trump has held talks with Kurdish leaders in Iraq. These organizations have openly expressed their intentions to replicate in Rojhilat what the PYD achieved in Rojava, establishing autonomous self-governance in Iranian Kurdish territories during a period of central state weakness. The current war, with its potential to fracture Iranian state authority, may be precisely the window Kurdish groups have been waiting for.
Iraqi Kurdistan serves as the principal rear base for these operations, but its hospitality toward Iranian Kurdish militants is not unconditional. The two dominant forces of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the Talabani-led PUK and the Barzani-led KDP, have markedly different calculations. The PUK, rooted in Sulaymaniyah, has historically maintained pragmatic ties with Tehran and tends to view Iranian Kurdish militancy with caution, wary of jeopardizing that relationship. The KDP, based in Erbil, leans more heavily on Ankara and Washington, giving it somewhat more latitude, though even Barzani has reasons to avoid fully antagonizing Iran. The result is a fragile tolerance: militant groups operate from Iraqi Kurdish soil, but under constraints that could tighten or loosen depending on how the war unfolds.
Given that Kurds are among the minorities most likely to receive US and Israeli military backing, West Azerbaijan could serve as a launchpad for an insurgency, the opening act of a ground campaign. The heavy concentration of recent airstrikes in this province lends weight to this interpretation.
How Azerbaijanis respond to such a scenario is far from straightforward. Long-standing tensions exist between Azerbaijani and Kurdish communities, rooted in religious differences (Kurds are predominantly Sunni; Azerbaijanis predominantly Shia), disparate treatment by the state (Kurds face both religious and linguistic discrimination, while Azerbaijanis are frequently favored for government roles in West Azerbaijan, regarded as a more loyal community), and markedly different levels of armed organization. Kurdish locals, settled mostly in mountainous terrain outside full state control, are significantly more armed than their Azerbaijani neighbors.
The vision of a Greater Kurdistan, encompassing Rojhilat alongside Kurdish-populated areas of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, is a particular source of unease among Azerbaijanis in West Azerbaijan. Much of the territory that Kurdish nationalists consider part of Rojhilat overlaps with areas Azerbaijanis regard as historically their own. The prospect of ethnic borders being redrawn in favor of a Kurdish entity, backed by outside powers, is not an abstract threat for Azerbaijanis living there, it is regarded as a direct challenge to their presence in the region.
Both communities also carry strong territorial identities, making any negotiated division of land highly unlikely. A Kurdish force gaining momentum could trigger resistance from Azerbaijanis, especially if ethnic borders appear to be shifting. What starts as an anti-regime insurgency could quickly evolve into an inter-ethnic conflict — one that risks pulling in both Azerbaijan and Turkey, transforming Iranian Azerbaijan into a full-blown theater of war.
Few Azerbaijanis would willingly accept a future that invites mass casualties, forced displacement, and ethnic cleansing on their doorstep. Tehran, for its part, might seek to mobilize Azerbaijanis against a Kurdish uprising, further entangling a community that has the most to lose and the least to gain. In the end, both Azerbaijanis and Kurds in Iran may find themselves cast as participants in someone else’s war: communities already exhausted by crippling sanctions and aerial bombardment, now facing the prospect of serving as cannon fodder, possibly against each other, in a conflict engineered by outside powers.
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