分类： politics

A controversial claim from former U.S. President Donald Trump that Washington supplied weapons to Iranian anti-government protesters via Iranian Kurdish groups has been uniformly rejected by senior leaders of every major Iranian Kurdish opposition faction, in statements collected by independent outlet Middle East Eye.

During an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump asserted, “We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them. And I think the Kurds took the guns.” This comment represented the latest shift in the former president’s inconsistent public positioning on Kurdish involvement amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran that launched on February 28.

Just weeks earlier, in early March, Trump told Reuters he openly backed Kurdish forces launching an offensive against the Iranian government, a remark that came alongside widespread unconfirmed media reports claiming the Central Intelligence Agency was secretly arming Iranian Kurdish factions. Within days, however, Trump walked back that support, telling reporters he had explicitly blocked any Kurdish military involvement, saying “They’re willing to go in, but I’ve told them I don’t want them to go in.”

Top figures from every major Iranian Kurdish armed opposition group have now directly refuted Trump’s latest weapons claim. Siamand Moeini, a senior leader of the armed Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), told Middle East Eye, “We as PJAK, as I know, have not received anything. As for others, I cannot answer.”

Hana Yazdanpanah, foreign relations coordinator for the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), emphasized that her group’s only armaments date back to its multi-year campaign against the Islamic State. “We still have our old Kalashnikov that we fought ISIS with for five years and the weapons they abandoned after its defeat,” she said, adding, “We have received no single weapon from the US at this time.”

Mustafa Mawloudi, deputy secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI)—a group based in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region—also denied both receiving weapons and smuggling armaments to activists in Iranian Kurdistan, which Kurdish groups refer to as Rojhalat. “A proof of this is that we cannot send arms through Iraq to our people,” Mawloudi explained, noting that cross-border arms transfers would create immediate legal complications with Iraqi authorities. He also stressed that armed action would fundamentally change the nature of popular protest, saying, “protesters cannot demonstrate with weapons: That would be a war, not a protest.”

Kako Alyar, a member of the Politburo of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said the group had no advance knowledge of Trump’s comments and confirmed no weapons had been received. “We weren’t in touch during the protests regarding giving weapons to the Kurds, and the Komala party has not received any weapons,” Alyar said.

Babasheikh Hosseini, secretary-general of the Iraq-based Khabat Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle, added that his group has never held official meetings with U.S. representatives. “There have been some talks with mediators with one or two friends, but we have not sat down for a meeting,” he said. Hosseini also noted that most of the group’s existing armaments were destroyed in Iranian regime airstrikes on its bases, saying, “Our money, weapons and equipment have been burned and destroyed.”

Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, which collectively command roughly 6,000 armed fighters, have stayed out of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The inconsistent, shifting statements from the U.S. administration have left Kurdish faction leaders confused and surprised, according to on-the-ground reporting.

The weapons claim references nationwide anti-government protests that swept Iran in late December, which lasted roughly two weeks before being violently crushed by Iranian state forces amid a nationwide internet shutdown. Rights group Amnesty International estimates Iranian authorities killed thousands of protesters during mass crackdowns on January 8 and 9, while the Iranian government says hundreds of its security personnel were killed in clashes during the unrest. Shukriya Bradost, an Iranian Kurdish security analyst based in the region, told Middle East Eye that no weapons were delivered to Kurdish groups or Iranian activists during those protests.

Bradost questioned the logic of Trump’s claim, noting that untrained civilian protesters would have no practical use for covert weapons supplies. “Who would receive these weapons and what was the plan for the protesters? To start a civil war or to fight back? The protesters who don’t know how to use weapons or do not have any training,” she said. As of the current stage of the U.S.-Israeli war, no new large-scale anti-government protests have been reported inside Iran, and no armed attacks by civilian activists on Iranian security forces have been documented.

Long-running cross-border Iranian attacks targeting Iranian Kurdish opposition bases in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region have intensified since the war launched on February 28. PDKI data confirms more than 650 missile and drone strikes have been launched on targets in the Kurdistan Region since February 28, leaving 14 people dead and 93 wounded. Five of those killed were members of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, including fighters from PAK, Komala, and Khabat. Most recently, a Kurdish security source confirmed three separate drone strikes targeted PDKI bases in Koya, Erbil Province, just this past Sunday. On March 13, a drone strike on Khabat Organization positions in the Bashiqa Mountains northeast of Mosul killed two party members.

Senior Iraqi Kurdish commander Sirwan Barzani previously rejected Western media claims that Iraqi Kurdish authorities were facilitating Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border into Iran to carry out attacks, echoing the current denials of weapons supplies.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have reached a boiling point in 2026, with open military conflict erupting after decades of escalating hostility, covert interference, and broken diplomatic opportunities. What began as a 1953 CIA-backed coup to oust a democratically elected leader has evolved into one of the world’s most volatile geopolitical standoffs, with global energy supplies and regional security hanging in the balance.

The foundational rift between the two nations dates back to the early 1950s, when Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh moved to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, redirecting fossil fuel profits away from foreign corporate control and toward domestic public investment. Fearing Soviet influence would spread across the Middle East and disrupt global oil flows, the U.S. joined the United Kingdom in launching Operation Ajax, a covert operation that toppled Mossadegh and installed a pro-Western government under the autocratic Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. For the next 25 years, the U.S. backed the Shah’s repressive rule, with his secret police force SAVAK violently crushing domestic dissent while many Iranians struggled in poverty amid the Shah’s corruption and lavish spending.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution shattered this fragile status quo. After the Shah fled Iran for cancer treatment, exiled Shiite leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to overthrow the monarchy and establish the current Islamic Republic. When U.S. President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to enter the U.S. for specialized medical care that same year, enraged Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 American hostages for 444 days. The crisis led to the permanent severing of formal diplomatic ties between the two nations and set the stage for decades of open hostility.

Over the following decades, repeated clashes and mutual accusations deepened the divide. In 1980, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, launching an eight-year war that killed more than 600,000 people; the U.S. tacitly backed Hussein, turning a blind eye to Iraq’s use of illegal chemical weapons against Iranian forces to counter the newly formed anti-American Islamic regime. By 1984, Washington officially designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, imposing a strict arms embargo that led to a secret scandal just years later: the Reagan administration was found to have illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund anti-socialist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, a controversy that rocked the Reagan presidency. In 1988, a U.S. Navy warplane shot down an Iranian civilian passenger jet, Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 people on board. While the U.S. called it an accidental error, Iran viewed the incident as deliberate aggression, and tensions remained high.

Over the next three decades, tentative overtures for reconciliation repeatedly fell apart. A brief opening emerged in 1997, when moderate Iranian president Mohammad Khatami expressed respect for the American people and called for people-to-people exchanges, but hardline opposition from Iran’s supreme leadership blocked formal progress. Just five years later, President George W. Bush labeled Iran part of an “Axis of Evil” alongside Iraq and North Korea, ending any immediate hopes of detente. In 2002, an exiled opposition group revealed Iran had been operating secret nuclear facilities in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, sparking global alarm; over the following years, the U.S. and Israel launched the Stuxnet cyberattack to disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment program, slowing its nuclear progress. A 2003 Iranian offer for comprehensive talks on nuclear issues, terrorism, and regional stability was rejected by hardliners in the Bush administration, and the opportunity for reconciliation faded when hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected Iranian president two years later.

The most significant breakthrough came in 2015, when the Obama administration negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), widely known as the Iran nuclear deal, alongside China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Under the agreement, Iran drastically limited its uranium enrichment program and allowed unfettered international inspections in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions. For three years, international inspectors repeatedly confirmed Iran was complying with the deal’s terms, but President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, reimposing harsh sanctions and escalating tensions once again.

Tensions boiled over in 2020, when a U.S. drone strike killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful figure in Iran’s government, leading Iran to launch ballistic missile strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq. After the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel worsened regional tensions, Trump’s second presidential term in 2025 opened with new nuclear negotiations, but Israeli airstrikes on Iran derailed talks, leading the U.S. to launch its own strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025. By early 2026, what had been decades of covert and low-intensity conflict erupted into open war: U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in Operation Epic Fury killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders, prompting Iran to strike targets across the Persian Gulf and disrupt shipping through the critical Strait of Hormuz, turning a decades-long bilateral rivalry into a full-scale regional conflict.

HANOI — In a key institutional step for Vietnam’s legislative branch, the country’s National Assembly formally elected Tran Thanh Man to the position of chairman on Monday, according to state sources. The election, which took place in the Vietnamese capital, marks a new leadership appointment for the country’s top lawmaking body. The announcement of the outcome was updated on April 6, 2026, confirming the result of the vote held by the legislative assembly. As the chairman of the National Assembly, Tran Thanh Man will lead the body’s legislative work, oversee its operational agenda, and fulfill the core constitutional responsibilities associated with the role. This leadership transition aligns with Vietnam’s established legislative governance procedures, bringing a new presiding officer to the national legislature that shapes the country’s policy and legal framework.

In a landmark address to his cabinet on Monday, Republic of Korea (ROK) President Lee Jae-myung became the first South Korean head of state to formally express regret to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) following an incident involving unauthorized civilian drone flights into DPRK territory that sparked unneeded military friction on the Korean Peninsula.

Lee emphasized that while the South Korean government bore no direct intention for the incident, the irresponsible and reckless actions of a small number of private actors had generated avoidable military tension between the two Koreas. In his capacity as the nation’s president, Lee extended his official regret to the DPRK over the episode.

Beyond the expression of regret, the president ordered South Korea’s relevant government ministries to immediately overhaul existing regulatory and security systems, rolling out concrete, enforceable measures to prevent similar unauthorized incidents from occurring in the future. He also offered his deepest consolation to residents living along the inter-Korean border, who have faced elevated anxiety and uncertainty in the wake of the incident.

This public address marks the first time the South Korean president has issued a formal statement of regret since the drone incident was brought to light. Earlier in February, South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young had already conveyed an official government-level expression of regret to the DPRK regarding the unauthorized civilian drone incursions.

Lee reinforced that South Korea’s constitution and national laws explicitly prohibit private citizens from carrying out independent provocative acts against the DPRK, noting that the occurrence of such private provocations remains a source of deep regret for his administration. The president added that all South Korean people must clearly recognize that peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula are the most critical priorities for the region, and that this shared stability must be safeguarded collectively by all parties.

After years of gradual public observations and incremental official assessments, South Korea’s top intelligence body has delivered its most definitive judgment to date on the North Korean succession: Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter is being groomed to extend the Kim family’s dynastic rule into a fourth generation.

The confirmation came during a closed-door policy briefing to South Korea’s National Assembly on Monday, according to multiple lawmakers who attended the session. National Intelligence Service Director Lee Jong-seok told lawmakers that it is now reasonable to identify the girl, widely believed to be 13-year-old Kim Ju Ae, as the designated future leader of North Korea, lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun told reporters after the meeting.

This latest statement marks a clear escalation of the NIS’s public assessments of Kim Ju Ae’s status. Early in 2024, the agency first labeled her as the likely heir, and just months ago in February, it concluded she was nearing an official designation as successor. Monday’s briefing solidified that positioning into a clear, formal confirmation.

In a striking secondary finding that upends long-held outside assumptions about North Korea’s power structure, the NIS also dismissed the long-circulated narrative that Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, would pose a challenge to her niece’s rise. Citing unspecified but reliable intelligence, the agency told lawmakers Kim Yo Jong — long viewed by many foreign analysts as North Korea’s second-most powerful figure — holds no substantive governing authority, leaving her no pathway to block the younger Kim’s succession.

Kim Ju Ae first began appearing at high-profile state events alongside her father in late 2022, and North Korean state media has repeatedly referred to her as Kim Jong Un’s “most beloved” and “respected” child, a framing that sparked widespread international speculation about her future role. In recent months, she has taken on an increasingly public portfolio tied to the country’s powerful military: she has been photographed driving a tank during military drills supervised by her father and firing pistols during a visit to a light weapons factory. According to lawmakers who received the briefing, North Korean authorities arranged these public military appearances to establish Kim Ju Ae’s credentials among the country’s military elite and dampen existing skepticism about the prospect of a female leader.

North Korea has been ruled exclusively by male members of the Kim dynasty since the country’s founding in 1948. Kim Il Sung, the state’s founder, passed power to his son Kim Jong Il in 1994, who in turn transferred control to his son Kim Jong Un following his death in 2011. While the NIS’s assessment is the most definitive official foreign judgment on the succession to date, not all outside observers agree with the conclusion. Critics note that North Korea operates as an extremely patriarchal society, arguing that elite and public acceptance of a female leader remains unlikely. They also point out that Kim Jong Un is just 42 years old, and naming an heir so early in his rule could risk eroding his own hold on power, making a formal designation premature.

Details about Kim Ju Ae’s personal life remain tightly guarded by Pyongyang. North Korean state media has never confirmed her name or exact age; the widely used name Kim Ju Ae stems from a 2013 account by former NBA star Dennis Rodman, who met the Kim family during a visit to Pyongyang and recalled holding Kim Jong Un’s infant daughter.

Leading commercial satellite imagery provider Planet Labs has announced it will implement an indefinite hold on all new satellite imagery covering Iran and neighboring regions where the escalating conflict involving the United States and Israel is unfolding, in direct compliance with a request from the Trump administration. The move restricts access to a critical source of visual intelligence that has been relied on by major news organizations, independent journalists, and human rights monitors to document conflict developments on the ground.

In an email notification sent to journalists who regularly use Planet Labs’ imagery to cover tit-for-tat strikes between US, Israeli and Iranian forces Saturday, the firm confirmed it is shifting to a heavily restricted managed access framework going forward. Under the new policy, any imagery release will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with approval only granted for what the company defines as urgent, mission-critical needs or explicit cases of public interest.

The censorship order applies to all imagery and data collected from March 9 onward. This is not the first restriction the company has imposed on coverage of the region: previously, Planet Labs implemented a mandatory 14-day delay on imagery releases, framed as a measure to prevent the data from being “leveraged by adversarial actors.”

The restriction has drawn immediate criticism from media and transparency advocates, who warn it will severely limit independent coverage of the conflict. Evan Hill, a veteran reporter with The Washington Post, noted that Planet Labs ranks among the most important US-based commercial satellite providers, with its imagery serving as a core information source for the vast majority of global media outlets covering the conflict. The new indefinite hold will cut off that vital flow of visual information for independent observers.

The policy change comes at a sensitive moment for US military operations: recent US intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran’s military capabilities have exceeded initial American expectations, contradicting public claims from the Pentagon that joint US-Israeli bombing has severely degraded Iran’s missile stockpiles. Multiple intelligence assessments indicate Iran has retained a large share of its operational missiles and mobile launch platforms, undercutting official US narratives of military progress.

Human rights and campaign groups have framed the imagery restriction as a deliberate effort to cover up civilian harm and military setbacks. Sarah Wilkinson, a United Kingdom-based human rights campaigner, argued that the censorship of war imagery is explicitly intended to hide the truth of what is happening on the ground from the global public. Mark Ames, a podcast host and independent commentator, sardonically framed the White House request as a telling indication that the Trump administration’s conflict in Iran is facing significant challenges.

The policy change coincided with a series of escalatory threats from former President Donald Trump over the weekend. Trump warned that this coming Tuesday would be what he called “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one,” announcing expanded strikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure unless Tehran agreed to meet US demands for a negotiated settlement by Monday.

Already, recent joint strikes have caused significant civilian and infrastructure damage. A major Iranian bridge was destroyed in US strikes Saturday, while Israeli forces bombed a large petrochemical complex, sending toxic pollution into the adjacent populated city and killing at least 13 people across the two attacks. A projectile that landed near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant also killed one person, sparking widespread alarm over the risk of a catastrophic nuclear incident. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that a large-scale attack on the facility could trigger a nuclear accident with generational devastating public health consequences.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, pointed out that the restriction of satellite imagery directly serves the goal of hiding the full scale of US and Israeli bombing campaigns from independent scrutiny, saying “will make it much more difficult to monitor US-Israeli bombing there, which seems to be the point.”

In a separate related development over the weekend, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces had destroyed all closed-circuit security cameras surrounding the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in southern Lebanon. The incident comes amid rising tensions for UN peacekeepers in the region: three UNIFIL personnel were wounded in a blast Friday, and multiple peacekeepers have been killed since early March, with several of those deaths attributed to Israeli fire.

On Easter Sunday, former U.S. President Donald Trump made a series of stunning, unplanned disclosures about U.S. operations targeting Iran, confirming that Washington secretly armed anti-government protesters inside the country just weeks before launching military strikes—even as American diplomatic envoys held face-to-face negotiations with senior Iranian leaders on European soil.

In a phone interview with Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, Trump laid out details of the covert operation: the U.S. arranged weapons shipments to Iranian demonstrators who flooded city streets in late 2024, sparked by crippling economic hardship brought on by sweeping U.S. sanctions on Tehran. However, the secret mission ultimately went completely off plan.

The weapons, which were routed to intended recipients through Kurdish intermediaries based in the region, never ended up in the hands of the protesters the U.S. intended to arm. Paraphrasing Trump’s account during the on-air segment, Yingst relayed the former president’s blunt assessment: “We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds, and the president says he thinks the Kurds kept them.”

This on-the-record confirmation aligns with earlier unconfirmed intelligence reports that the Central Intelligence Agency had been working for months to arm Iranian Kurdish opposition groups. Trump’s remarks also line up with public comments he made in early March, when he stated it would be “wonderful” if Iranian Kurdish forces based in Iraq crossed the border to launch attacks on the Iranian government. Just days after that provocative comment, however, Trump walked back his position, adopting a far more cautious tone. “We’re very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is. I have ruled that out. I don’t want the Kurds going in,” he said at the time.

Experts say the newly revealed admission makes clear that the U.S. was far more deeply involved in efforts to destabilize the sitting Iranian government than previously acknowledged—at the exact same time that U.S. diplomats were holding unofficial back-channel negotiations with Iranian representatives. The mass protests that the U.S. sought to support were ultimately crushed by Iranian security forces, with conflicting reports over casualties. Trump claimed in the interview that Iranian authorities killed more than “40,000 civilians” during the government crackdown, but no independent verification or credible evidence has emerged to back up that staggering death toll claim.

In separate comments to Axios, Trump shared additional details about another high-stakes recent event: the successful rescue of an American F-15 aircrew member whose plane was shot down over Iranian territory the previous Friday. The downed pilot was safely recovered in the late hours of Saturday, capping off a multi-day search and extraction operation that put U.S. forces on high alert. During the mission, U.S. intelligence officials had raised concerns that the pilot’s emergency locator beacon was being used by Iranian forces as bait to lure American rescue teams into a trap.

Trump’s inflammatory language describing Iranians during his discussion of the pilot rescue drew swift backlash from political observers and advocacy groups across the globe. Referring to ordinary Iranian citizens in his remarks to Axios, Trump claimed: “Thousands of these savages were hunting him down. Even the population was looking for him. They offered people a bonus if they captured him.” The dehumanizing language was immediately condemned as bigoted and inflammatory by critics.