Iran Officially Opposes Kurdish Independence Referendum

On 25 September, Iraqi Kurds will go to the polls in a referendum in both the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and the “disputed territories” such as Kirkuk and Diyala which are claimed by both the central Iraqi government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. On the ballot will be a single question: “Do you want the Kurdistan region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region’s administration to become an independent state?”

The Iranian government has long opposed any Kurdish independence in Iraq, largely because they fear how the precedent might impact the Kurdish population in Iran. While no Middle Eastern country besides Israel has allowed true censuses in decades because of the sensitivity of the data for their own internal security, most geographers and anthropologists estimate that perhaps eight percent of Iranians speak Kurdish as their first language. Iran has a Kordestan province, but it encompasses only about half of the areas inside Iran in which Kurds predominate. Therefore, the idea that the Iraqi Kurdish referendum will include not only the Iraqi Kurdistan Region itself but neighboring provinces worries Tehran even more.

Recently, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major-General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of Staff for the Armed Forces of Iran, commented that the referendum “is the beginning of [a] crisis and … new challenges in the region” and called the vote “unacceptable.” In the excerpted remarks from an Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference, an unidentified journalist asks Bahram Qassemi, the foreign ministry spokesman, to speak about Bagheri’s remarks. While Qassemi’s remarks are a bit more diplomatic in tone, he underscores that the Iranian government shares the concerns of the IRGC. So too does the Supreme National Security Council who, on the same day as Qassemi’s press conference, warned that “Although this issue might look attractive, it will actually isolate and pressure the Iraqi Kurds; weaken Kurdistan and finally the entire Iraq.”

The KRG brands itself as the most stable, democratic, and pro-American entity in the region. The KRG’s decision to move forward with the referendum despite Iran throwing down the gauntlet will likely lead to growing tension between Iran and the KRG. How that tension plays out—whether in greater Iranian support for anti-referendum Kurdish parties and politicians or more overt violence directed at Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party—can significantly alter stability calculations throughout the region.