Kurdistan and world revolution, Part 3: Iran

“There is something more dangerous to Netanyahu and his entire war machine than all missiles and drones that are now hitting Israel: the political consciousness of the Iranian people.”
Siyâvash Shahabi, Firenexttime.net

Today the US-Israeli war on Iran has focused world attention on that country. Their war seeks complete military domination not only of Iran but of the entire region. As implied by the comment of Siyâvash Shahabi quoted above, this domination is threatened by the political consciousness of the Iranian people. That consciousness has been demonstrated time and again by their inspiring uprisings against the Iranian regime. The US-Israeli war also seeks to undermine and in fact crush that revolutionary process. Central to that revolutionary process is the struggle of the Kurdish people against their historic oppression. This gives added importance to the issue of the Kurdish people in Iran, and beyond.

We begin with some historical background.

Kurds and the colonial revolution after WW II
At the end of WW II a global struggle broke out in the colonial world. Part of that struggle was that of the Kurdish people. In Iran, two different Kurdish groups were organizing against their repression. Those were the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI) and the Komala Party. As with so many of the Kurdish parties, the goal of the PDKI was Kurdish freedom, either through a separate state or autonomy within Iran. They did not see the Kurdish struggle as being interlinked with the class struggle. Their main strategy was guerrallism.

In 1953, the CIA helped organize a coup to overthrow the left nationalist Iranian government of Mossadegh. He was replaced with Shah Reza Pahlavi. His dictatorial rule included repression of the Kurdish people. He was overthrown in the revolution of 1979, which brought the present tregime to power.

By that time, another Kurdish party had developed – Komala. It seems its roots can be traced back to 1969, and by 1979 it had formally established itself, Komala’s political origins were connected to the Communist Party of Iran. As is true for similar parties connected with the Soviet bureaucracy  around the world, a connection between political independence and socialism was absolutely denied. That was the case for Komala also.

This failure on the part of both Komala and the PDKI played an important role in the 1979 revolution against the Shah.

According to the Washington Kurdish Insitute, the PDKI supported Mossadegh, as did the majority of Kurdish voters. When the 1979 revolution against the Shah broke out, the PDKI supported it but then initially also supported the new regime of the Ayatollah, under the illusion that it would grant the Kurdish people some degree of autonomy. They were quickly disabused of that notion, but it was too late.

As for Komala, according to Wikipedia they largely operated “underground” and utilized guerrilla methods. These were the same methods used by Mojaheden-e-Kalk (MEK), a student led Iranian “revolutionary” group at that time.

In the excellent book Revolution and Counter Revolution in Iran* Phil Marshall explains the rise of workers councils, called “shoras” during the revolution. These councils could have played the central role in building a workers government. That is the key to socialist revolution. However, what was necessary was a force that was conscious of the shoras’ potential. On that basis, they would have been able to pose the next steps towards a workers government. Neither the Iranian communist party – the Tudeh – nor Komala nor any other force did so. The guerrilla strategy of both MEK and Komala left them largely outside the working class and its organizations, the shoras included. In fact, Tudeh actually supported the Ayatollah taking power!

Today, some mourn the failure of the 1979 revolution to achieve capitalist democracy. That was never a possibility. The possibilities were workers power and socialism or counter revolution. There is a lesson there for the Kurdish parties’ present aim today for a democratic (but capitalist) Iran within which Kurdish rights are recognized.

The new regime crushed both worker organizations and general democratic rights including women’s rights and the rights of the Kurdish people. So we see that even at that stage how the struggle of the Kurdish people in Iran, the class struggle, the broader Iranian revolution and the issue of socialism are all interlinked. Unfortunately, neither the Kurdish parties throughout Kurdistan nor the parties leading the colonial revolutions throughout the colonial world recognized that.

Later, Komala reportedly received help from the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the party oriented towards US imperialism, from which it received aid in 2008. Wikipedia quotes its founder, Abdullah Mohtadi, as saying “If you’re a political movement that is part of an opposition, you need help from abroad… We’re not ashamed to admit it.” This is no accident; the MEK followed the same trajectory.

In 2004, a new Kurdish Iranian party was formed – the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK). It was formed as the Iranian wing of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and has the same program and strategy – the armed struggle. In the years that followed, the Iranian and Turkish regimes exchanged intelligence on both parties, enabling those regimes to further hunt down the parties’ members, many of whom were based on the Qandil Mountains, which straddle the border between Iran and Iraq. An indication of their overall orientation can be seen in the report that in 2011 they had called for a resolution of the Kurdish issue “through peaceful means” – with the fascist Iran Revolutionary Guard (IRGC)!

In 2007, various Kurdish parties formed the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) in an attempt to bring together various Kurdish parties including the PKK, Syria’s PYD, PJAK and others.

Finally there is the Kurdistan Freedom Party – PAK – which also fights for Kurdish rights in the absence of the wider class struggle and bases itself on guerrallism.

All of these parties went through their ups and downs, now gooing on an offensive, now retreating. Now killing government forces and now being killed. What really affected their

orientation was the Women, Life, Freedom struggle of 2023. In January of 2026, the PDKI, PAK, PJAK, Komala and another party – the Organization of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle (Khabat) announced the formation of a formal coalition. This was the culmination of years of joint discussion, but it seems overwhelmngly likely that it was the movement itself that finally propelled them forward.

 

The Iranian Kurdish news outlet rohjelat.info reports the 15 point program the coalition adopted in their self-proclaimed Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan. They say their main goal is “to strengthen unity among Kurdish political forces, increase political and field coordination, and organize a joint struggle for democracy, justice, and the national rights of the Kurdish people in Iran and Eastern Kurdistan.” They adopted a 15 point program which among other things calls for “democratic decision making” between the parties involved, support for a democratic Iran which should include “the right to self-determination”, and a “coordinated defense strategy” for the armed struggle. The general aim seems to be the development of an autonomous Iranian Kurdistan within the framework of bourgeois democracy (including women’s rights) in both that region and in Iran as a whole. There is no hint of reference to the clash of interestes between the working class and the capitalist class, in other words class struggle. No a mention of union rights is made.

It concludes: “The Platform of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan commits itself to advancing this joint struggle with determination, relying on the support of the people and remaining faithful to the principles set forth in this document until the legitimate rights of the Kurdish people are achieved.”

The five parties that compose the coalition are: Party for Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), Komala Party of Kurdistan (led by Reza Kaabi – see comment below), Khabat Organization of Iranian Kurdistan, and Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). Komala had split into different parties of the same name and two of them did not join. They were Komala – Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran and Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan. The former is led by Ebrahim Alizadeh, who had been in the Communist Party of Iran. The latter is led by Abdullah Mohtadi. He apparently calls for an independent Iranian Kurdistan, although even that is unclear. He apparently took a more militant and independent stance, but then turned around and posted on X “I commend POTUS for standing with us and coming to our aid. I call on the regime to step aside…”

The coalition has reportedly stated that they “support democracy and a commitment to full equality between men and women.

“Furthermore, the groups say they support democracy for Iran as a whole and cooperation with other opposition forces in particular. They expect a unified organization to handle external and international relations.”

They also appear to assume that Kurdish majority areas will be liberated, and their charter includes articles detailing how to organize and administer ‘liberated areas.’” In other words, the guiding vision is bourgeois democracy in Iran within which the Kurds will have a degree of autonomy.

Perspectives for Iran revolution
What are (or were prior to the US/Israeli attack) the perspectives for the overthrow of the Iranian dictatorship?

The 2022 Women Life Freedom struggle was accompanied by a series of workers strikes. Despite that, the regime was able to hold on due to its grip on the Iran Revolutionary Guard (IRGC)as well as the thugs in the Basiji. These forces drowned the movement in blood. Nevertheless, the movement rose up again just a few years later, in January and February of 2026!

The renewed struggle brought the Kurdish movement closer to the wider struggle. Hengsaw.net reports that in the first week of January of this year a call went out for a general strike throughout Iranian Kurdistan. “The general strike was called on Tuesday, January 6, 2026, by seven Kurdish political parties and civil organizations, in support of residents of Ilam, Kermanshah (Kermashan), and Lorestan, and in solidarity with the ongoing protests. The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights also formally expressed its support for civic action through a public statement.”

Here we see the problem in a nutshell: The wider movement drew the Kurdish parties into the struggle, but these parties still sought to keep the Kurdish struggle separate and apart from the wider struggle as much as they could. Hengaw does not report that there was any serious attempt to coordinate this call in Kurdistan with a wider call, nor are there reports of the Kurdish parties integrating themselves into the wider movement.

However, the Kurdish parties did take another step forward. On February 22, 2026, after weeks of negotiating among themselves, five Kurdish political parties announced a new alliance. The parties involved were the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the Organization of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle (Khabat), and the Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan (which is just one of Komala, which has split into several different parties all of which use the same name).

In other words, the movement itself brought these parties to formally recognize that the Kurdish struggle is integrally connected to the struggle of wider Iranian society. Their hope is for a capitalist Iran run along generally democratic lines within which Kurdish majority areas will have a degree of autonomy.

However, the renewed struggle was drowned in an even worse bloodbath. Wikipedia reports that some estimates are as high as 36,500 killed by the regime. Normally, the rank and file of a government’s armed force will crack with wide layers joining the revolution in this sort of situation. That’s what happened in the first year or so of the Syrian revolution, for example. However, the Iran regime has a special situation with its “Revolutionary Guard”, the IRGC. They are not just a military caste; the IRGC is actually a capitalist corporation that owns and operates, for example, the Iranian oil industry. Not only do IRGC members receive special privileges, they and their families live largely apart from Iranian society. The IRGC has about 125,000 members. To this should be added Iran’s Basiji, which has about 60,000 full time members. How can such a bloody force they be overcome when it is willing to go to any extreme? It has been proven time and again that a guerrilla struggle cannot succeed. However, there is a potentially greater force: The rank and file soldiers in Iran’s army. They number about 600,000. The question is how, by what means, can they be won over to the revolution? That question also involves what the role is of the Kurdish struggle throughout the region and also the role of the wider working class. Direct and intimate knowledge of the forces at work would be necessary to suggest exactly what steps can be taken along those lines, but it’s hard to see any potentially successful revolution outside of that general strategy.

At least that was the question until Trump and Netanyahu started to attack Iran. The main aims of their assault are to assert total dominance of the region by Israeli and US imperialism. A successful popular revolution in Iran would act as a huge barrier to that dominance, and the imperialist attack has done enormous damage not only to Iranian society as a whole but also to the revolution against the regime.

Despite that, according to the NY Times (among other sources), Mustafa Hijri, the leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI) has been in discussion with Trump about coordinating efforts to overthrow the Iran government. Evidently those discussions have come to nothing for a variety of reasons. One is that Trump became convinced that the PDKI, and the Kurdish groups in general, could not successfully overthrow the Iran regime. It’s also likely that Turkey’s president Erdogan would have strongly objected. But from the Kurdish side, it seems that some of them still entertain illusions in the US, despite the US’s betrayal of them in Syria.. In that country, the US dropped its support for the Kurdish PYD as soon as that support became inconvenient. Prior to that, then-president George Bush encouraged the Iraqi Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein during the first Iraqi war. When the Kurds did so, Bush stepped aside and allowed the Kurds to be slaughtered. The US would do exactly the same for the Iranian Kurds – use them and then let them be slaughtered if it served the US’s interests.

More recently, Israeli journalist Irai Anghel reported her very friendly reception in a PJAK camp in the Qandil mountains. She said that members and leaders in the camp were friendly to Israel because Israel is attacking the Iranian government. This is not a moral question. Israel is trying to literally destroy Iranian society. They will turn on the Kurds when it suits them just as they turned on Hamas after supporting it for years. Furthermore, by supporting Israel, PJAK will alienate every other group in Iran and beyond. And to the degree that the Kurdish cause is associated with PJAK, to that extent that cause is alienated also.

We do not know how far Trump will go with his war – whether he will bow to the pressures from within MAGA to end it as soon as possible or the contrary pressures to send ground troops into Iran. Even a possible use of nuclear weapons cannot be excluded. Trump’s recent speech (April 2) gave some hints, but then Trump changes every hour or so. Therefore, we have no idea of what will remain of Iranian society, and therefore the revolution itself. All of that has a direct bearing on the struggle of the Kurds. So we return, once again to the original theme: that the freedom struggle of the Kurdish people involves the struggle of the wider working class, the issue of capitalism itself, and the global struggle for workers power and socialism. 

Note: This is the third of a five part series on the struggle of the Kurdish people and world revolution. In Part 1 we discussed the Kurds in Turkey. In Part 2 we discussed the Kurds in Syria. Next will be a section on the Kurds in Iraq and finally some general political conclusions. If you find these articles useful, we suggest you take out a free subscription in order to get email notification when future articles are published. (Your contact information won’t be used for anything else!)

• – Footnote: I cannot recommend Marshall’s short book Revolution and Counter Revolution in Iran strongly enough. Through Marshall’s concise history of the 1979 revolution a clear summary emerges of how the working class organizes in a revolutionary period, its road to power, how it can embark down that road or how it is stymied. Marshall shows that in such a period, there are only two options – conquest of power by the working class and the overthrow of capitalism itself or counter-revolution. A middle road of capitalist democracy is not possible. Marshall also clearly exposes the futility of the entire guerrallist/terrorist strategy. There is an extended quote from his book in the article Why Marxism opposes individual terrorism. The concluding article in this series on Kurdistan will deal with these issues more extensively.