Güney Yıldız writes:

The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces inside Iran. President Trump called Kurdish leaders personally over the weekend — and on Tuesday spoke directly with Mustafa Hijri, president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, whose camps the IRGC had just struck with drones. Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House with Kurdish uprising numbers already mapped. Weapons have reportedly been smuggled into western Iran since last year’s twelve-day war. Israeli strikes are targeting Iranian military outposts along the Iraq border to clear a path for ground operations.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Ali Larijani — steering what remains of a state whose command structure has been decapitated three times in nine months — threatened “secessionist groups” with severe consequences.

And the man Washington’s allies are grooming as the alternative? Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi denounced the Kurdish coalition as separatist.

The regime and its replacement agree on at least one thing. That agreement has a cost — and the Syrian precedent suggests it is higher than either side imagines. [Continue reading…]