Will Iran kill Masrour Barzani, his son, or Talabanis in retaliation?

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

Get Ready for Assassinations in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Islamic Republic will certainly teach Kurdish leaders a lesson

Iraqi Kurdistan’s Neighbors Have Always Used Kurdish Divisions to Maximize Their Own Interests

There is a cost to allowing wounded dictators to survive. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s decision to stand down after the liberation of Kuwait but leave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in power in Baghdad led to Saddam massacring tens of thousands of Iraqis who had revolted against his rule.

Already, the Islamic Republic’s death squads fan out across Iran to arrest, try, and execute scores of Iranians whom they accuse of helping the Mossad. The revolutionary courts allow no meaningful defense, and vengeance and terror appear higher goals than determination of guilt or innocence.

While Iranian leaders once pointed to Iran’s Jewish community and functioning synagogues as evidence that the Islamic Republic was not antisemitic, reports now suggest that security forces are rounding up and detaining the country’s Jews.

After today’s state funerals for senior Iranian military officials killed in Israeli strikes, the regime is also seeking to target those who helped Israelis penetrate their country. While publicly Israelis justify their relationship with Azerbaijan’s brutal dictatorship in terms of the assistance Baku provides Israel, Jerusalem has always exaggerated Baku’s role.

Iranian authorities believe that the disassembled drones smuggled into Iran, as well as Israeli operatives, entered the country through Iraqi Kurdistan. Erbil 2025 is like Casablanca 1941. Foreign intelligence agencies—Iranians, Turks, Israelis, Saudis, British, Americans, and more—operate freely and often trip over each other.

To some extent the ruling Barzani family allows their presence both because they believe they can trade cooperation for international support and, frankly, because they lack the power to stand up to the Turks, Iranians, and Americans. The Mossad presence that was once an irritant for the Qods Force and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence is now an existential threat to the regime. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Qods Force blame Kurdish leaders.

Several Kurdish leaders—Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the uncle to Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani, for example—implied to numerous foreign diplomats and other interlocutors that they had inside knowledge of Israeli and U.S. plans.

This might have been self-puffery to pretend to have more knowledge than they did, but Masrour and younger brother Waysi Barzani on one hand and brothers Bafel and Qubad Talabani on the other knew about Mossad operations in the territory they control.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been relatively stable for decades, despite the Barzanis’ and Talabanis’ failure to pay salaries. While there have been some assassinations in Erbil—most notably the 2004 Islamist suicide bomb attack on Parliament Speaker Sami Abdulrahman and the 2019 murder by a disgruntled Kurd of Turkish agent Osman Köse—such episodes have been few and far between.

Expect that to change. Iraqi Kurdistan’s neighbors have always used Kurdish divisions to maximize their own interests. Such divisions exist within both the Barzani and Talabani families. As long as Masrour cooperated with them, the Iranians were fine accepting his dynastic succession from father Massoud and growing efforts to install son Areen as Masrour’s own heir apparent.

Masrour was slowly marginalizing his cousin Nechirvan Barzani, who currently serves as president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. The same was true with the duumvirate of Bafel and Qubad, who pushed aside their cousin Lahur.

Lahur Sheikh Jangi Talabani (right), then co-president of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), pictured with Nechirvan Barzani (left), President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, in 2019. Photo: Nechirvan Barzani’s Press Office/via iKurd.net

With Iranian fury running high, Masrour and Areen and the Talabani brothers should be worried. The Islamic Republic will certainly teach Kurdish leaders a lesson. Killing Masrour or his son or one or both Talabani brothers will be that revenge. It will signal to their alternates—Nechirvan and Lahur—that they should not cross the Iranians. Neither Nechirvan nor Lahur are Iranian proxies, though they do have good relations with Tehran, but they would understand Iran’s desire to recalibrate Kurdish relations vis-à-vis the United States and Israel.

The Barzanis’ arrest of Kurdish journalists and Bafel and Qubad’s arrest of opposition politician and clean government advocate Ali Hama Salih suggest weakness even as they seek to project strength to diplomats. Kurds are unhappy and understand that it is their unpaid salaries that fund the Barzanis and Talabanis as they jet set to various conferences across Europe and Asia.

The Barzanis may believe they can hide in their cliff-top palace complex that father Massoud inherited from one-time ally Saddam Hussein, but the Iranians can penetrate their bodyguards. Checkpoints along the road to Salahuddin cannot stop explosive drones. The same holds true for the Talabanis.

President Donald Trump imposed a ceasefire but did not understand its costs. True, he can resume bombing Iranian nuclear sites or leadership if Iranian officials do not forfeit their nuclear program but for Kurdistan’s current leaders, that may be too late.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.