The success of the Israeli operations in Iran, during the twelve-day war, is evidenced by the massive damage the Israeli and American air forces inflicted on Iran’s nuclear installations. Furthermore, the Israeli air force and its commandos eliminated Iran’s top nuclear scientists and military personnel and destroyed more than 50% of Iran’s ballistic missiles and a similar percentage of its launchers. Military facilities used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were also destroyed, as well as Iran’s air defenses. Israel’s operation exposed Iran’s weakness — to the quiet cheers of the moderate Arab Gulf states.
The Iranian regime’s pride and confidence were shaken by the events of June 2025, and its sense of “honor” was injured. As a result, the regime has sought to avenge its humiliation by turning against its minorities, especially the Kurds, whom its leaders accuse of collaborating with the Israelis.
According to the European Peace Foundation (EPF), the Tehran regime executed at least six Kurdish people and imprisoned another 700 throughout the Kurdish areas. Iran is currently engaged in an unprecedented campaign of public execution of Kurds suspected of belonging to the Kurdish underground. The President of the EPF, KC Hum Sappan, issued a harsh condemnation on June 27, 2025, over the Iranian regime’s arrests and executions of Kurds.
Under the pretext of “national security,” the Iranian regime’s authorities began a sweeping campaign of arresting Kurdish civilians whom they accuse of belonging to the Kurdish underground that cooperated with Israeli Mossad agents and assisted them in penetrating deep into Iranian territory during the Twelve-Day War.
Jews were also apprehended by the Iranian regime intelligence services. Fred Saberi, an Iranian-Swedish political analyst and opposition activist, told the JNS (Jewish News Syndicate) that the Iranian regime’s humiliating defeat by the Israeli military on Iranian soil exposed the Islamic Republic’s internal weakness. The regime’s security apparatus is cracking down on the population in the country to discourage potential domestic uprisings, he said.
“The regime is like a badly wounded hyena right now, and they want to show they are still in control there, so they will arrest and perhaps even execute hundreds of innocents inside Iran,” Saberi told JNS. Saberi added, “The regime is very suspicious of everyone being a spy in the country, especially the Jews living there, who they may think have connections with Israel.”
The 10,000 to 15,000 Jews in Iran are less threatening to the regime than the approximately 10 to 15 million Kurds there. Nevertheless, according to several reports, about 700 Jews were apprehended, and most were later released.
In an appeal to the international community, the Kurdish National Center of Eastern Kurdistan (Iranian Kurdistan) stated that “following the 12-day war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel and the announcement of a ceasefire, the Iranian regime — having suffered major strategic and security failures — has turned to retaliate against the Kurdish people instead of addressing the real causes of its defeat.”
The same statement included the following:
On the afternoon of June 24, 2025, immediately after the ceasefire, more than 150 individuals in the city of Kermanshah were arrested and imprisoned by Iranian security forces. Subsequently, on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, three Kurdish border porters — Idris Ali, Azad Shojaei, and Rasoul Ahmad Mohammad — were executed on charges of assisting in the transfer of equipment and weapons allegedly used in the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top figure in Iran’s nuclear program.
These allegations are baseless and contradict earlier official statements. In December 2020, Mahmoud Alavi, then Minister of Intelligence under President Hassan Rouhani, publicly admitted that Iran’s security services had failed to track down the perpetrators of Fakhrizadeh’s assassination.
These executions appear to be politically motivated acts of scapegoating, intended to divert attention from the regime’s recent military and intelligence failures. Iranian Kurds are gravely concerned that the Islamic Republic — emboldened by its survival after Israeli attacks — may repeat the horrors of 1988, when, following Ayatollah Khomeini’s acceptance of the ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War, thousands of political prisoners were executed in mass killings. This time, accusations of espionage and collaboration with Israel may serve as the pretext for another wave of mass executions and widespread repression, particularly targeting the Kurdish population.
Iranian-Kurdish armed groups have found refuge in the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northeastern Iraq, and in some Arab Gulf states. Among them is an old acquaintance whom I hosted in New York, Hussein Yazdanpanah, the former leader of the Iranian Kurdish Freedom Party that includes an armed wing. Yazdanpanah, encouraged by the chaos in Iran, following the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran, posted a call on X for the Kurdish youth to rise up against the ayatollah’s regime.
A friend, Dr. Sherkoh Abbas, president of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, in a telephone conversation with this reporter, spoke out against the Iranian regime’s persecution of its Kurdish population, saying, “Iran’s intensifying execution of Kurdish individuals — often under sweeping accusations of foreign allegiance — reveals a brutal strategy to stifle dissent and vilify an entire community. These actions are typically cloaked in secrecy and marred by allegations of coerced confessions and denied legal rights. What emerges is a disturbing pattern of scapegoating, where the Kurdish identity itself becomes a political liability.”
Abbas added, “As Iran’s internal legitimacy declines and external conflicts escalate, the regime turns inward. Labeling Kurds as foreign agents not only dismisses their long-standing pursuit of pluralism but undermines any vision of an inclusive regional future.”
The time is now ripe for the minority communities in Iran — whose numbers amount to almost half of the population — to band together and bring down the hated fanatically theocratic regime.
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