A startling new allegation from Israel’s i24News has pulled back the curtain on a planned cross-border incursion into Iran by Kurdish militias, a operation that was months in the planning and backed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, before Turkish diplomatic and political pressure forced Washington to scrap the attack earlier this year.
Senior unnamed Israeli sources confirmed to the outlet that the incursion had been in development for months under the oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies. Preparations for the strike included high-level coordination meetings with Kurdish militia leadership, transfers of weapons to frontline fighters, and specialized military training to prepare for the incursion. One week before the planned launch date, the militias received their allocated weapons, but when the time came to move into Iranian territory, U.S. officials issued a last-minute veto halting the entire operation.
Israeli officials quoted in the report have pinned the leak of the operation’s details to Turkish authorities on U.S. Vice President JD Vance, alleging that associates of Vance shared intelligence about the imminent incursion with Ankara. Turkish officials, once alerted, immediately moved to shut down the plan, the report claims.
For Turkey, blocking a Kurdish incursion into Iran aligns with long-standing national security priorities. Ankara has waged decades of counterinsurgency campaigns against Kurdish separatist groups within its own borders, as well as across the border in northern Iraq and Syria. A destabilized Iran with a weakened central government would create a new hub for Kurdish armed activity on Turkey’s southeastern border, a scenario Ankara has long prioritized avoiding. This opposition was formalized in March, when Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan issued a direct warning to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio against backing any Kurdish military operation inside Iran, matching an earlier report from The New York Times.
According to the i24News report, the planned Kurdish incursion was intended to be a core component of broader U.S. and Israeli efforts to achieve regime change in Iran during the early 2024 war against the country. This account lines up with separate reporting from earlier this year: CNN revealed in March that the CIA had provided months of military support to Kurdish armed groups positioned along the Iran-Iraq border ahead of the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran in late February, while Reuters documented that Israeli intelligence had maintained regular contact with Kurdish militias in the border region for more than a year before the outbreak of conflict. After the war began, Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on targets in western Iran to create a corridor for the Kurdish incursion that ultimately never launched.
Low-level clashes between Iranian forces and Kurdish armed groups continue to this day. Just last week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps killed five fighters from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan during a clash in northwestern Iran, after the group crossed into Iranian territory near the city of Piranshahr in West Azerbaijan province, according to official Iranian statements.
The explosive i24News report comes at a moment of rapidly escalating tensions between Israel and Turkey. Just last week, Fidan declared in an interview with CNN Turk that “Israel is not just my problem; Israel is the world’s problem.” Israeli officials are increasingly sounding the alarm over a potential direct military confrontation with Ankara: Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli told Israel’s Kan 11 broadcaster Thursday that a scenario of Turkey launching an attack on Israel is “entirely possible.” On Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the country’s top security establishment has warned the national government of Turkey’s growing military and political influence in Syria, Lebanon, and other neighboring regions, alleging that Ankara is working to build a strategic “chokehold” around Israeli territory.