Iranisches Regime intensiviert Repressionen gegen Kurden

Es kommt, wie zu erwarten war: Das iranische Regime, das sich als Sieger im Krieg gegen die USA und Israel feiert, auch wenn es bestenfalls, was allerdings in asymmetrischen Kriegen ausreicht, kein Verlierer ist, intensiviert Repression und Verfolgung von Kurdinnen und Kurden. Die nämlich hatten mehrheitlich auf einen Sturz der Machthaber in Teheran gehofft und dieser Hoffnung auch auf vielfältiger Art und Weise Ausdruck verliehen. Nun bekommen sie die Rache des Regimes spüren:

Iran has launched a new wave of arrests and executions targeting Kurdish citizens and political prisoners, in what human rights groups describe as an escalating crackdown expected to intensify in the coming weeks.

According to Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights organization that monitors violations across Iran - particularly in Kurdish-majority western regions known as Rojhelat - authorities have recently detained several Kurdish civilians without due process.

The group reported on Sunday that Vahid Boroumand and Ezzedin Pasu-Pish, two Kurds from Piranshahr, and Sayed Anwar Alavi from Oshnavieh in West Azerbaijan province, “have been arrested following raids on their homes by government forces and transferred to an undisclosed location.” (...)

In 2025 alone, at least 1,639 people were executed in Iran - a 68 percent increase from the previous year and the highest figure since 1989, according to a joint report by Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty organizations.

In the first three months of this year, at least 160 prisoners were executed in Iranian prisons, including 11 Kurds, according to Hengaw, which noted that 12 were hanged for allegations of opposing the government, spying, or offences such as blasphemy.

Derweil versuchen iranisch-kurdische Parteien in der schwierigen Lage zu navigieren, ohne selbst als Kriegspartei zu erscheinen. Mit namhafter Unterstützung aus dem Westen können sie eh nicht mehr rechnen: 

If they engage both with actors close to a logic of confrontation, especially in the United States, and with European actors often opposed to war, it is also because Western policies themselves lack clarity. There is a rapid shift from military escalation to de-escalation efforts, with a focus on security and economic issues such as the Strait of Hormuz, while largely ignoring the rights of Iran’s peoples and the country’s political future.

Finally, it is important to recall a bitter reality: the Kurds of Iran have almost never been received by Western governments. Contacts have always existed, but mainly at the level of political parties and parliaments. The rare Iranian figures officially received are usually from the Iranian civil society, not from political parties. Thus, in 2018, when the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy was at its peak, PDKI officials held numerous meetings with U.S. Congress members and the State Department. However, it was clearly established that the U.S. administration, in order not to compromise any chances of reaching a new agreement with Iran, did not wish to receive representatives of the Iranian opposition at the White House. By contrast, in the 1990s, under the presidency of Bill Clinton, who was not a hardliner toward the Iranian regime, Kurdish figures such as Abdullah Hassan Zadeh and Mustafa Hijri could be received by senior White House advisors. This has not happened since, including during the current war.

The paradiplomacy of the Kurds of Iran is therefore part of a multilateral logic. In the absence of a decisive ally, they invest simultaneously in several political arenas, sometimes in ways that are contradictory, without being able to rely on a coherent Western strategy. This multiplicity reflects less a choice than a constraint. It shows an adaptation to an unstable environment, where the immediate challenge is not only to influence ongoing dynamics, but also to avoid being marginalized in the political reconfigurations to come.