Exiled Iranian Kurds in Iraq say they will return only if Iran’s theocracy falls

QUSHTAPA, Iraq (AP) — They fled Iran as children and now, living in Iraq as adults, they express guarded hope that the U.S.–Israeli will weaken the theocracy that forced them into exile decades ago.

Behind that hope is the longing of that they can someday return to homes they only remember through paintings on their walls and faded photographs.

But the thousands of Kurds know their aspirations for and their historical opposition to Iran's clerical rule have made that unlikely. They say they will only go back if a new Iranian government is installed, guarantees their safety and supports their goals.

Among them are more than 300 families of Kawa Camp in Irbil's Qushtapa district in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. They were displaced after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, which sparked a decades-long conflict with Kurdish separatists.

Many are descendants of those fighters. They fled as children with their families from the northern Iranian province of Kermanshah. Some joined the resistance in exile, carrying out attacks against security forces inside Iran. Most eke out a living on the margins of the Iraqi Kurdish society, where they lack citizenship and don’t have full civil rights, access to services or the ability to own property.

In Kawa Camp, their hope of returning is tempered by deep mistrust of foreign powers that have long exploited their cause for geopolitical ends. Many viewed recent reports that the Trump administration to support ground operations in Iran as the latest example.

“From 1979 until now, this has been our only hope — that the regime will fall. I’m watching the clock; if it falls now, I’ll return home the next second,” said a 57-year-old member of the Iranian Kurdish opposition party living in Kawa, who fled Iran at age 11.

The person, like most of those interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal from Iran-backed Iraqi militias that have stepped up attacks on Iranian Kurdish bases. They also cite surveillance by Iranian intelligence, since many still have relatives in Iran.

Iraqi Kurds govern a semiautonomous area in northern Iraq. Many have waged insurgency campaigns seeking to establish their own state, which they call Kurdistan. Iranian Kurds have a long history of grievances against the Islamic Republic and also the .

In the Kawa home of community leader Jehangir Ahmadi hangs a painting of an alley in his native village in Iran’s Kurdish-majority Kermanshah province, which borders Iraq. He hasn't seen the alley in nearly 50 years, and his childhood reels like an old film: He played among those sandy walls while village elders would chat beneath the poplars.

Ahmadi remembers the mad dash to leave home and the days spent waiting to cross the border. The family first lived in a camp close to the border before being moved to another, in the deserts of western Anbar province. Security rapidly deteriorated after the fall of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, prompting the United Nations to rehouse them.

Over the years, tents gave way to permanent homes, markets sprang up, and the Iranian Kurds obtained the right to work, many as merchants, taxi drivers and factory workers. But buying a house or a car requires finding an Iraqi sponsor who must assume legal responsibility for them, effectively tying their fate to that sponsor, Ahmadi said.

“For all our lives in Iraq we were paying the price of leaving. Until now people look at us like we are slaves,” Ahmadi said. “Until now we don’t have good work, no good place to live.”

In his view, Kurds, and especially Iran’s Kurds, have historically been victims. There was the short-lived self-governing Republic of Mahabad in northwestern Iran, backed briefly by the Soviet Union before its fall in 1976; Iran withdrawing support in 1975 for a failed Kurdish uprising against Iraq; Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988; after the fall of President Bashar Assad in December 2024.

So Ahmadi says he was skeptical of the reported U.S. request to back an Iranian Kurdish force in the current war.

“We didn’t trust that they will support us because we are wounded nation, we have been betrayed many times,” he said.

Armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq have come under attack from Iran's proxies in Iraq .

Commanders and Iraqi Kurdish political leaders say they lack the capacity to mount a genuine ground offensive without U.S. air cover, and that the idea floated by the United States was never seriously discussed with Washington.

A senior Iraqi Kurdish official said that some Iranian Kurdish groups initially hoped for a swift collapse of Iran's theocracy and envisioned storming into Iranian Kurdish territory to declare victory. Other Iraqi Kurdish leaders, seeing the administration in Tehran as more resilient, warned them bluntly: “You will be massacred,” according to the official.

Unit commander Rebaz Sharifi hid in a mountainside crevice when a struck a base of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, waiting for further strikes to pass. The party is an Iranian-Kurdish nationalist separatist group known by the local abbreviation PAK.

Sharifi said there are roughly 8,000 to 10,000 Iranian Kurdish fighters — a figure corroborated by two other Iraqi Kurdish officials. Beyond basic assault rifles, they lack sophisticated modern weaponry and do not possess drones, a crucial capability in modern warfare.

He said Iranian-Kurdish groups are asking for security guarantees, especially air cover, to counter Iranian missiles and drones.

“We don’t want to go now because we know we will die because of (Iranian) airstrikes and missiles,” he said. “It’s not the right time for this because Iranian forces still have power to control the skies.”

At the mere possibility that the groups might be mobilizing for deployment, Iran-backed groups in Iraq launched a near-daily volley of air attacks.

“So, imagine what they will do if we move there now,” Sharifi said.

The threat of continued attacks drove Kurdish fighters to move their families out of military camps and into nearby communities seeking safety.

In Kawa, a local resident affiliated with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan is sheltering the wife and children of a fighter from the party’s armed wing. They moved from the party's camp in Koya, near the border, because of constant attacks in the first days of the war.

The militia drone attacks haven't targeted civilian communities so far, but the party member fears that might change as the war progresses.

“Every day we are afraid of the militias,” he said. “We are nervous at night because we think they might hit here also.”

And he fears Iran’s intelligence working in the area.

“My relatives in Iran told me that they know where I work, what I do, and where I live,” he said.

A life of displacement for Iranian Kurds in Iraq

Kurdish groups have come under attack from Iran's proxies

Kawa Camp residents face threats from all sides