Iraq’s Kurdish opposition is ready to take on the regime, but says it is not yet because Trump is backing away from threats

In the mountains of northern Iraq, just 30 miles from the border with Iran, CBS News met Thursday morning with fighters — many of them women — from an armed Iranian Kurdish opposition group who say they are ready to fight and oust the Islamic Republic’s hardline clerical rulers.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI) is banned as a terrorist group Iran and based on exile across the Iraqi border. For years, the Iranian regime has been training for the day it can be ousted from power. But as President Trump appears to be backing away from threats of US military intervention in favor of Iranian protesters, the leader of the Kurdish group told CBS News that the time has not yet come.

President Trump he said on Wednesday He said he had heard on “good authority” that “the killing in Iran is stopping” and that there were “no plans to execute it” in the country. after a brutal repression to end two weeks of widespread protests. Sources inside Iran have told CBS News of the crackdown by Iranian authorities over 12,000 people may have diedand probably many more.

His remarks marked a retreat from repeated warnings of unspecified US intervention to protect protesters, followed by a threat on Tuesday. Order “very strong actions”. If it is Iran the demonstrators were hanged.

That may not have been the signal from Washington that PDKI forces training along the Iraqi border were hoping for.

Commander Sayran Gargoli told CBS News that the protests gave them hope that the oppressive regime that came to power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution could be finally overthrown, but “if the people demonstrating in the streets get international support.”

PDKI leader Mustafa Hijri has lived in exile for more than four decades, and has seen Iranian authorities stand down against several major clashes. As recent protests seem likely to suffer the same fate, he said he could not say for sure whether this uprising could be substantial.

“It depends on whether the widespread killing will continue. If it continues, surely the protesters will not be able to continue. On the other hand, there are other possible scenarios, such as America entering into negotiations with the mule regime and forcing it to accept its terms. In this case, the regime will be able to extend its existence for a while.”

He said he expects US intervention, and specifically attacks on Iran, “centers of oppressive forces that are shooting people in the street and targeting their so-called ‘justice’ institutions that serve the government. We want to see those institutions gone.”

“The majority of the Iranian people are not happy with this regime, and they are against it,” Hijri said.

But without foreign aid, Hijri told CBS News that PDKI forces crossing the border – and deploying the thousands the group says are lurking inside the country – could backfire dramatically.

“I think that at this moment it is not in the interest of the demonstrators to return the armed forces to the country, because it becomes a convenient excuse for the regime to kill people,” he said. “That is why we have not reached the moment to make such a decision. But when the day comes, and when we conclude that the return of our peshmerga (Kurdish) forces will not become an additional reason to suppress the protesters, we may do so.”

Hijri said PDKI wants the Kurds, who make up about 10 percent of Iran’s population, and other ethnic minorities to be allowed to live “under democratic law” and for their children to be allowed to learn in their own language, and for the government to officially recognize their right to do so.

The opposition fighters, as Hijri said, “have been trained, and are there, ready for what the party needs.”

But as Iran’s hardline leaders increasingly appear to have survived another major challenge to their hold on power, at least for now, the PKDI and the millions of Iranians still in the country can only wait.