Iran and the Kurds - What the Referendum Means for Tehran

On the eve of Monday’s referendum on the future of Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian armed forces conducted a significant military drill on the border between Iran and Iraq as Tehran warned the Kurds not to move forward with the plebiscite. Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—the entity in charge of crafting and communicating the country’s security strategy—announced that it would halt all flights to and from the Kurdistan region’s major airports, Sulaymaniyah and Erbil. According to Tehran, the council took that step after Baghdad requested it to do so. All this activity is hardly surprising; in a region plagued by conflict and terrorism, the Kurdish referendum may just be Iran’s greatest challenge yet. And now that the Kurds have voted for independence despite regional and international opposition, they’ll be starting what will likely become a long, multilayered negotiating process to achieve secession. 

Iran has a longstanding relationship with Iraqi Kurds, and it’s the only country in the region with a substantial Kurdish population to have consistently preserved decent relations with them. Iranian support for the Kurds has received more attention since 2014, when Iran backed certain Kurdish efforts against the Islamic State (ISIS), but the ties go back decades. 

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