The Secret Plan to Weaponize the Kurds (Part 1) - with Itai Anghel

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0:21You are listening to an ARK Media podcast. When the Mossad plan was revealed, I was shocked. I was not shocked from the idea of working alongside with the Kurds. It has a lot of potential. I was surprised learning how the preparation for this audacious operation was so thin. I mean, it is a guerrilla. It is not an army. They do not have fighter jets or tanks. So boats on the ground is not enough. I mean, you have to provide overwhelming air support. But nothing happened. This is when the Kurdish guy told me, let's wait for the Israelis and for the Americans to get serious.

1:13It's 11 a.m. on Monday, August 3rd in New York City. It is 6 p.m. on Monday, August 3rd in Israel, days after President Trump announced again that a last-minute U.S.-Israeli joint strike on Iran has been called off. For most of the past century, the Kurds have had one reliable geopolitical function. When someone needs brave, disciplined fighters to take on a common enemy, the Kurds are who they turn to. But when the battle ends, or supporting them, becomes politically inconvenient, their allies tend to disappear. They are the largest stateless nation on earth. More than 40 million people split across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, bound by a national identity that ignores every one of those borders.

2:00Their history produced a proverb as bleak as it is accurate. No friends, but the mountains. Governments come and go. American and Israeli promises come and go. The mountains are the only one ally that endures. That cycle repeated itself against ISIS. While Iraqi and Syrian armies fled, Kurdish men and women held their ground. Roughly 11 ,000 of them died doing so. Kurdish women became a particular threat to ISIS fighters, who believed dying at a woman's hand would cost them martyrdom, and the 72 virgins who allegedly await them. And then in the recent war with Iran, the Kurds were handed a new potentially historic role, reportedly Israel's own plan to help topple the regime in Tehran ran through Kurdish fighters as boots on the ground.

2:51Although mocked in some circles, on paper there was a logic to it. Capable fighters, a regime they already despise, and a documented almost devotional affinity for Israel in Jewish history. But the operation never happened the way it was supposed to. Was it a lack of will, arms or Turkish political pressure. Our guest today, Itai Engel, spent the better part of a month among Kurdish fighters, from northern Syria to Kurdish guerrilla caves on the Iraq-Iran border, trying to understand this often misunderstood people and peoplehood. That month happened to be during the peak of the demonstrations against the Iranian regime, followed by a brutal crackdown which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Iranians by the regime.

3:40So what actually happened with the Kurds? To answer this question, we're going to tell this story from two perspectives. Part one today, in which Itay will give us the Kurdish perspective, and part two, in which ARK Media contributor Ndav Ayal will share the planner's perspective, the Mossad, the IDF, and the war cabinet. That part will drop on Monday. Itai Engel is an award-winning senior correspondent and documentary filmmaker for Uvda, Israel's leading investigative and current affairs program on Channel 12. He received the Sokolov Prize, Israel's highest journalism award, and was nominated for an international Emmy Award for his documentaries on the war in Ukraine.

4:22My conversation with Itai right after this short break. This message is sponsored by the Israel Democracy Institute. Every election cycle in Israel is accompanied by the words, this is the most consequential election in history. It's become a cliche, but this time it may actually be true. As followers of Israeli politics, you know how hard it can be to distinguish the issues from partisan spin and to go behind the headlines to understand what's really going on. If you enjoy the kind of thoughtful, fact-based conversations we have on this podcast, I think you'll appreciate the work of the Israel Democracy Institute, IDI, a leading nonpartisan center of research and action.

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6:21Itai Engel, welcome to Call Me Back. Thank you for having me, Dan. Itai, you called the Kurds, quote, the best friends you don't know about. You didn't get that from a briefing. You got it from spending a month on the ground in Syria and then in guerrilla caves on the Iraq-Iran border. So let me just put out my own bias, my own positive bias. I spent a lot of time with Kurds and Kurdish political leaders when I worked in Iraq immediately after the Iraq war in places like Erbil and Dohuk and Halabja and Kirkuk and Soleimaniya. So I feel some sense of connection to that community. So what you say really resonates me with like the best friends people don't know about.

7:07So I was thrilled to have this discussion where we can try to explain to the world or to whoever's listening who they are and why they should know about them. So if you were telling someone sitting in an air-conditioned room, what would you want them to know about the Kurds? You know, then, as a field correspondent who had been seven times in Iraq and seven times in Syria, I would call them not only the best friends that we don't know about, but I think I would say these are the allies that we are missing out. I mean, what's striking for me is where they live in some of the most hostile environments to Israelis.

7:41is Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey. And you know, when I hang around in those areas, usually I hide my Israeli identity. I have my foreign passport and I have my ways, but with the Kurds, I do not need to do any of it, you know, because most of the Kurds, when they meet me, they give me a very warm welcome. And soon enough, you know, the conversation would go to something like, you, the Jewish people, are the only group of people on earth that had suffered attempts of annihilation and massacres even more than what we Kurds had been through. And the Kurds were killed by a million. And they continue in saying, but you Jewish people managed to rise up, managed to rise up and building your state, building your nation, and this is exactly the thing that we want to learn to do.

8:32And therefore, you have like amazing scenes talking about the vibes. Imagine the group of the male and female fighters in the mountain mainly, studying Hebrew a little bit, and the history of Jewish people, and the history of Israel. It is amazing. And by the way, it is not only out of love for the state of Israel, but for a very pragmatic reason. You know, those people managed to rise up from unimaginable tragedy. How did they do it? I want to do the same. One of the most remarkable conversations I had took place seven months ago inside Syria. I came to know an English teacher by the name of Hassan in Amuda, Amuda in northern Syria.

9:14And he just figured out that I'm an Israeli. And please listen to what he said. We Kurds, all of us love the Jews, love the state of Israel, because we have been persecuted all of our life. We saw Israel as a spark of hope to save us from those people who are persecuting us. We know we are persecuted like them by the same people in the area. So we hope that our forces come together. We unite. We hope that Israel will defend us the same way they defend the Druze in South Syria. So our hope is now only stuck on Israel. So you recorded that conversation, but I'm sure I've reflected on it a lot since.

10:13But in real time, when you were first hearing him say that and articulate his view about the Jews and Israel the way he did, what were you thinking? Sincerely, I was on the verge of tears. Because usually when I hang around in Syria, I have to be careful and I try to think what this guy thinks about me. This guy has his eyes on me. Maybe we'll realize who I am and I'm in deep trouble. So here's a guy who knows exactly who I am, who knows that I'm an Israeli, and this is what he has to say. And not only the love that he has to Israel, but how he thinks that Israel should protect the Kurds in Syria, like to protect the Druze in Syria.

10:49So this definitely echoed in my mind for a few weeks after something terribly happened to the Syrian Kurds, in which we will discuss later on. Yeah, sure. Okay, now before we get into the actual story we're going to get into, I'm hoping you give me just the essential primer. Who are the Kurds? Where do they live? How can Kurdistan, what we call Kurdistan, be both a very real nation in the minds of its people and not an officially recognized sovereign nation? Well, you know, you can imagine a map of the Middle East and there is a huge chunk of territory divided into four countries. The Kurds are 40 million people, the biggest nation on earth that has no state.

11:33And they're divided. The biggest chunk is in southeast Turkey. You have them in northern Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran. Now, each family, Kurdish family that I meet, will tell me atrocities that they endured, whether it is in Iran, whether it is in Iraq. One guy will tell me about how he survived Halabjeh when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq. Other Yazidi Kurds will tell me how his two daughters were kidnapped by ISIS in order to be sex slave for the Islamic State, about prison inside Iran, atrocities and wiping of entire villages inside Turkey. They are the most oppressed in the Middle East.

12:18And, you know, later on, the conversation will turn into the big dream, a homeland, Kurdistan. Now, according to the dream, I would say maybe a fantasy, this whole huge territory is supposed to be, at the end, Kurdistan. The whole territory, but just so we understand, the whole territory, meaning pieces of Iraq, It's today modern-day Iraq, piece of modern-day Syria, piece of modern-day Turkey, piece of what is Iran today. You're saying like a contiguous piece of territory that stretches through those countries. Exactly. Four parts. And by the way, they will not call it like North Turkey or North Syria.

12:54When I was in Northern Iran. Or North Iraq, right. Or Northern Iraq, and I told them, how do you feel here in Northern Iraq? they told me, you know, Ita, I will like you very much, but if you say again Northern Iraq, it will slap your face. This is not Northern Iraq. This is the south part of Big Kurdistan. And they have like names in Kurdish, you know, north is Bakur, south is Bashur, the part in Iran, the east is Rojalat, and Syria, the western part is Rojava. We know the name Rojava. Rojava means In West, in Kurdish, it means the western part of the fantasy called Big Kurdistan. And you can see the biggest group of Kurds are inside Turkey, about 20 million.

13:38And it raises like big, big concerns by the Turkish president Erdogan. This is the main security threat that he sees. And he suppress not only the Kurds inside Turkey. He is afraid that they will demand autonomy. They control more than 20 % of the land. He is very much worried when there is a success for the Kurds in Syria and Iraq and Iran. He wouldn't like to have it because it will initiate uprising in Turkey itself. And the greatest degree of self-rule that the Kurds has for now is where you describe in northern Iraq, and they call it KRG, Kurdistan Regional Government. To a lesser extent, there is a self-rule in Syria.

14:27But you mentioned the most important proverb, no friend but the mountain. Most of the guerrilla groups that we are talking about are located in the mountain. And the mountain, it is a very harsh landscape. In some of the highest range of mountains in the Middle East, you have deep valleys, you have caves, extreme conditions of cold and heat. And it is perfect for guerrilla warfare. It means, you know, the Kurdish, even if we are a minority, we can defeat larger armies than us, you know, even Turkey's, the Sultan's, even Saddam's army. But why the only friends are the mountain? Because each and every country that promised to help us betrayed us in the end.

15:09So we cannot count on no one. By the way, it is part of our story. You mentioned Halabja, which is this area, this city and area in northern Iraq. Why the term Halabja looms so large in the history of the Kurds is because that was an area where Saddam Hussein in 1988 launched a chemical attack against Kurds and slaughtered about 5 ,000 Kurds. Exactly. Mostly women and children, I should emphasize. Now, the estimates range, but on the low end, it's 50 ,000 Kurds and as high as 100 ,000 Kurds. So it was a systemic slaughtering of the Kurds. And when I would spend time with Kurds, when I talked to them when I was in Iraq about Halabja, they memorialize that period the way we honor and try to memorialize the Shoah, the Holocaust.

15:59So in that sense, I'm struck by what you're saying, is that the sense of identification with the Jews is quite powerful and palpable. Yeah, this is why if you go to a football game in Erbil in northern Iraq in the Kurdish part, you can see banners that have to do nothing with football. It is written, Kurdistan is not Iraq. Like, forget about this country. We had enough, especially Halabje. This is not Iraq. This is Kurdistan. Do not mention the word Iraq. So KRG, and when people talk about Kurdistan, they usually refer to the northern Iraq because they have the self-rule over there. But it is not a state.

16:35It is not an official state. You know, there was an attempt by the president of KRG, Masoud Barazani, to declare it as an independent state. And he made a referendum. And because he made a referendum and decided to go all the way for independence, he was nicknamed the Kurdish Ben-Gurion. So just to be clear, the referendum that you're referring to is in 2017. Right. But it has to do with a very, very sad story because, of course, 99 % of the Kurds voted for the independence. And then, because it belongs still to the country of Iraq, so from Baghdad, the Shia forces stormed the Kurds and took a lot of territory, especially the city of Kirkuk, where you have the most of the oil over there.

17:19And the very sad thing is that one Kurdish group helped the Shia forces. We mentioned Masoud Barazani, the president of the Kurdish entity. Who I knew. I knew Barazani quite well. I worked with him. So you know also that there is another tribe by the name of Talabani. Yeah, the Talibanis, right. And they apparently became jealous of Barazani become the Kurdish Ben-Gurion. And they decided to help the Shia forces who came from Baghdad and even from Iran with the help of the notorious Qasem Soleimani. Here is another thing about the Kurd that is a little bit Jewish. You know, they have a lot of faction of guerrillas.

17:57They have a lot of controversies between themselves. Whenever they unite forces, it is a great success. But as Jewish, not always, they are on the same page. Okay. Itai, take us through your journey in December of 2025. And I want you to start with Kurdish Syria. Why did you go and what did you discover about the culture of the force you spent time with there? Sure. Well, you know, I'm a documentary filmmaker, so I can plan very carefully a trip, but history can intervene, and this is what happened. My intention was to go to the Kurdish part of Syria, in northern Syria, and document this entity.

18:35They have almost 30 % of Syria is Kurdish, and I've been there at the New Year's Eve, and it was amazing because, you know, they're celebrating inside Syria, but you see no Syrian flag. You see only Kurdish flag, only flags of region of the Kurds, no flag of Syria whatsoever. They are mocking the government of al-Julani, they are mocking al-Julani himself, and they are very, very proud of the Kurdish, they call it independence. And what is striking me, all the time when I meet the guerrilla of the Kurds, the women guerrilla fighters, they consist about 30 to 40 percent of the fighting force is women.

19:15It is women power. And the rules of the guerrilla are very strict. If you are a woman or a man for the case, and you would like to join the guerrilla, you're not a conscript. You volunteer. But by the way, you volunteer for life. There is no like pension at the age of 67 or even 77 or 87. It is for life. And in this life, you have no ability for romance, for sex, marriage, or to have kids. They wouldn't like to talk about it a lot, but from what I understand, there are two reasons for that. They wouldn't like jealousy between the comrades in the caves, in the mountains, you know, one has a girlfriend and the other one has not.

19:56And second thing, you know, the families of the female and the male fighters. They are coming from Kurdish areas. They are very conservative families. They are very proud that their son or their daughter is going to be a fighter. And they would like to be assured that they have a decent life, that life in the mountains, in the caves, are not sex and drugs and rock and roll. So no sex, no marriage, no children for the fighters of the guerrilla. And one more interesting thing is there is no God. The guerrilla is absolutely atheism. Imagine, Dan, there is no Allah or Akbar, there is no Jesus Christ, there is no Baruch Hashem.

20:36Everything according to the philosophy of the founder of the guerrilla, his name is Abdullah Otschalan. And by the way, Abdullah Otshalan, the founder of the guerrilla, was inspired by an American Jewish thinker. His name is Mari Bakchin. He's sort of an anarchist, lived in a grassroots democracy, devolved power to the region, complete equality between men and women, and politics of ecology. And this is the idea of the guerrilla. It is unmatched, and it's a women power like you do not have even in Scandinavian countries. Okay, but this is just important, and I don't think we've established this.

21:15Kurds are Muslim. They're not Arab, but they're Muslim. So what you're saying in terms of the empowerment of women, women being able to play the role that they play, is very striking for a Muslim society or Muslim culture anywhere. Yeah. Most of the Kurds are Sunni Muslims. Not all of them, by the way. You have some Yazidi Kurds, for example, who suffered like a great genocide in Sinjar in the most horrible days of ISIS. You have about 300 ,000 Kurdish Jewish Kurds here in Israel. One of us became the defense minister. It's Hak Mordechai. A lot of prominent Israelis. Avi Asikarov, who's a close friend, a prominent journalist in Israel, one of the co-creators of Fauda.

21:58He comes from Kurdish roots. He comes from a Kurdish family. He grew up on Kurdish dishes. His family are Kurdish immigrants to Israel. So, yeah, there are a lot of Kurdish Jews. I can mention someone that, according to my taste, you know, is not a big example, but Itamar Menviel is a Kurd as well. Right. But in the Muslim world, it is amazing. You know, I went to their basic training. And in the basic training in Israel, Tironut, you swear to God on a Bible. In, you know, the Navy SEALs, you swear on the New Testament, in ISIS on the Koran. Over there, they swear on a book of philosophy written by Otschalan that was inspired by an anarchist Jewish American thinker.

22:37And they swear to protect women's rights and the ecology. This is the guerrilla. We'll be right back. Over the past couple of years, Call Me Back has grown into something much bigger than we ever expected. A place for clarity, context, and honest conversations at a time when those things can seem hard to find. That's what ARK Media is all about. Building a truly independent voice, which means no one shaping what we say or how we say it. To help support our rapidly expanding operations, we created Inside Call Me Back, our members-only feed. If Call Me Back has been meaningful to you and you want to be part of what we're building, I hope you'll join us.

23:23You can subscribe at arcmedia.org or through the link in the show notes. And to our insiders, thank you. And we're back with the Tai Engel. So this was not your first rodeo in Kurdish Syria. Years earlier, you watched the Syrian and Iraqi armies really run, flee from ISIS while the Kurds stayed and fought. And during that time, they lost something like 11 ,000 fighters. What did that experience, and particularly the role we're talking here about Kurdish women, teach you about what these fighters were capable of? Oh, yeah, the time of ISIS. It began with me with something very deeply personal. It has to do with a friend of mine by the name of James Foley, an American journalist, great journalist, great friend.

24:11Yeah, sure. And we both were smuggled from Turkey inside Syria in the beginning of the civil war, November 2012. He was kidnapped by ISIS. And two years later, he was brutally beheaded by ISIS. So ISIS never was an abstract for me. As for the Kurds, you know, it began horribly with the genocide in Sinjar. They killed about 5 ,000 people in the worst techniques that you can possibly imagine. They kidnapped about 7 ,000, mostly women and children. Most of them became sex slaves in the Islamic State. By the way, almost 3 ,000 still missing. At the peaks of ISIS, they managed to take the territory of the size of Great Britain within four months.

24:59And so the Iraqi army fled, ran away from ISIS. Most of the Syrian army ran away. And the only force that stood its ground in the beginning were the female and male fighters of the Kurdish guerrilla. And I got to tell you, you know, when I was there in 2014, at the darkest day, I had my doubts because I've been with a unit of female fighters and I thought they would be able to protect me against mighty ISIS. And you know then, boy, I was wrong. Because it happened that the women fighters had an added value in the fight against the jihadists of ISIS. Because according to the perception of ISIS, you know, they are jihadists.

25:41If I fight a jihad, a holy war, and I'm killed, I'm not exactly dead. I'm going to heaven, there are 72 virgins in heaven, you know the story. But according to their dark and psycho perception, a woman that belongs to the infidels, it is an inferior creature. I'm sorry I speak like that, but this is their theory. And if an inferior creature kills you like a woman, let's face it, your death is not so much respected, you are not entitled to a martyrdom, and then you really die. So imagine you are, I'm sorry to say it, but imagine you are an ISIS, jihadist, and you see like a platoon of female and male fighters.

26:18You will try to kill the women because, you know, if a man kills you, you go to heaven. But if a female kills you, you know, it's very sad. You are dead. Now, the women, guerrilla fighters, know exactly this perception of ISIS. So they use it and they signal to the jihadists, sometimes in a street fight, you know, I heard it, it's amazing. Hello, we are women. If you are being shattered right now, it is by a bullet of women, no heaven for you. And now they signal to the jihadists that we are women, they have a battle cry. They call it Tileli, what Israel referred to as Kululu. It goes like Tileli-li-li-li-li-li-li-li-li-li.

26:56But you know, if a Kurdish woman is doing Tileli, you can hear it from Manhattan all the way to New Jersey.

27:10It is amazing. And when they hear the Tileli, you know, here you hear it in the background. It is in Syria. I film Kurdish guerrilla, female fighter, a sniper. She's shooting at ISIS and a girl who sits by her side is doing the Tileli. And they explained to me that whenever ISIS hears the Tileli, they lose it. They lose all concentration with the weapons and it becomes easier for them to kill them. Okay, so fast forward now to January of 2026. While you were in Kurdish Syria, a quiet deal behind closed doors was reached, resulting with one of your Kurdish contacts saying to you that Israel betrayed them.

27:54This is January of 2026. What happened? Yeah, I described to you the New Year's Eve and everybody was very much elated and felt a lot of confidence in the Kurdish entity. But then on the 5th of January, there was a very rare meeting between representatives of Israel, the United States and Syria. And Israel, as always, regarding Syria, we emphasize on the south. We told the government of Al-Julani, do not get close to the south. Do not engage with the Druze. The Druze are our brothers. And by the way, do not even get close to Dara 'a, which is very close to the Jordanian and the Israeli border.

28:35Forget about the south. And about the north, we said nothing. So, the following day, the soldiers, the jihadist soldiers of Al-Julani, began an incursion first inside Aleppo. There are neighborhoods of Kurds in Aleppo and there were ethnic clans from Aleppo. And from then on, the incursion came inside Rojava. And they killed about a thousand Kurds and actually wiped the entity of the Kurds in Syria. We talked about like almost 30 % that they had. And now it is confined to few pockets and that's it. Now, as far as the Kurds are concerned, timing is all the story. We cannot ignore the sequence of events.

29:21Exactly after Israel and the United States met al-Julani, everything had happened. So it means maybe a silent consent from the Israelis to this incursion, to this ethnic cleansing. Of course, we do not have any proof for that, but I want to put the reality according to the Kurds on the table. I mean, that was happened. So again, no friends behind the mountain. Here is another proof. The U.S. and Israel chose to do nothing, and they knew that Al-Jolani is about to kill us. And then my phone is flooded with messages. Messages, some of them are very harsh. You mentioned Hassan when I was close to tears, when he told me, like, we rely on you, Jews, and Israel, to protect us like you protect the Druze in Syria.

30:08and all of a sudden you get messages like, you betrayed us, you sold us. Now you lost 40 million friends, 40 million Kurds who loved Israel and now we don't trust you, not even a bit. I want you to listen to one typical message that I got. Listen, Itay. I'm not sure. His friends, they attack a coup in Rojava and there's a name of American and Israeli support match. So you can hear, Dan, they're talking about us Israelis and Americans selling them like a commodity. It's awful. And they refer to me as if I'm the state of Israel, you know, because I'm the man they know. And I try to tell them, listen, I'm really not sure that that will happen.

30:57I don't believe that my country and the idea of something like that about to happen. But for them, no, at least at this specific point of time. And it is very important, by the way, because they do not forget it. A thousand people of them were killed. Their entity in Syria actually seems to exist almost, at least the way it used to be. And they remember it. So the next challenge when they will be asked to be, for example, boots on the ground, maybe in Iran, they will remember this idea. Whenever things become too complicated for political reason or for whatever, they will leave us. And remember that because this is their point of view.

31:39You then traveled through snowstorms to Iranian Kurdish guerrillas on the Iraq-Iran border. So set the scene. Who are the main characters on this front and what were they focused on? Right. From Syria, we got inside Iraq and we drove about two days and a half all the way to the border between Iran and Iraq because I want to see Pajak. Pajak, the Iranian Kurdish guerrilla. I mean, they are all Iranians, by the way, who imagine the women throwing the hijab that they have to wear in Iran, crossing the Zagras Mountain, you know, because this is when the guerrilla have control in the border between Iran and Iraq.

32:18and coming to Iraq, to the self-ruled northern Iraq, in order to train to get back to fight inside Iran. Their families, their community will wait for them. Stuck-off weapons will wait for them. Maybe big demonstration. This is the idea. Now, we drove deliberately, by the way, in a very harsh snowstorm because, you know, a lot of drones are coming from Iran and from Turkey on these mountain peaks. and the caves, there are dozens of caves like carved into the peaks of the mountain and we get inside. And for me as an Israeli, I got to tell you, getting inside the tunnel was not easy, especially after these two and a half years I've been in tunnels in Gaza and all the memories are, you know, boiling.

33:06But over there in that tunnel, in the Zagros mountain, a tunnel that's sliding inside Iran, you get a very warm welcome by the commander of Pajak and the commander of Peshdaq, again, it is a woman, Peyman Vian. So when you come to think of it, she's probably the most wanted woman or even person by the Iranians and by the Turks. And that was my first question to her. And she looks at me like, why are you being so dramatic? So what? So who cares? I mean, I don't care about these people. This regime is about to end. And it doesn't matter whether the Israelis and the Americans decided to help us or not.

33:42This regime is about to end. And she's absolutely positive about it. And she mentioned and she emphasized that we will not operate according to the timeline of Israel and the United States. One thing that they emphasize all the way, every Kurd that we speak with, Kurds were never mercenaries. We act on our own interests. You know, they have a controversy among them. Whether we should take all the northwestern Iran and to create it like Kurdistan, or whether we think about Iran as a whole. and we would like to work along with the other minorities to topple the regime and have a liberal, democratic Iran that will provide autonomy for us, the Kurds, and for the Lord, and for the Baluchi, and for the Azeris, for everybody.

34:24So she is an amazing and charismatic woman, and I cannot film the other people for the simple reason that they are going in and out inside Iran. We in the United States and Israel relate only to the big operation that never happened. But you know, on a very small scale, units here and there from the territory of Kurdish Iraq are going inside Iran and do their thing for a very specific operation. So you cannot film anyone because he will show his face inside Iran within days. It goes here and there all the time. Just for our listeners to understand, this is early January 2026. So it's the height of the uprisings in Iran against the regime that the whole world was watching.

35:11And many of us were quite hopeful for that these uprisings could lead to something. Oh, well, I got to tell you, I was optimistic. So a week or two into the war, into Operation Epic Fury, so we're now like end of February, 2026, into March, 2026, Ronan Bergman from the New York Times and others revealed a Mossad plan that relied heavily on Kurdish forces, in which these forces would function as almost boots on the ground to fight the regime from within. The theory was this was actually part of the plan, or at least the Israeli plan. When you saw the reporting about that plan, what was your initial reaction?

35:53And you were in touch with your brothers, as they called you, in the Kurdish areas. What were they saying? So I'll tell you how I saw it and what my contacts told me the time that everything happened or didn't happen. When I heard reports coming from Washington that Kurds are on the way and already inside Iran, I was surprised, but I had my hopes. I was optimistic, and I gave them a call. And to my surprise, the sound of the guy on the border between Iran and Iraq that I know from the guerrilla, he sounded very, very sleepy. He said, kak itai. Kak in Kurdish means like brother, comrade. Kak itai.

36:32Chill. This is what he said. He said, chill. Nothing is happening. Not even one Kurd is entering Iran. Actually, now we are smoking hookah, you know, the pipe with a flavored tobacco. Yeah. And we are making coffee. I don't see why you have to be sound so dramatic. So nothing happens. And then, you know, besides the humor, he mentioned something else. He said something like, we are waiting for the U.S. and Israel to be serious. I got to admit, when the Mossad plan was revealed, I was shocked. By the way, I was not shocked from the idea of working alongside with the Kurds. I mean, this is not like unrealistic.

37:13It has a lot of potential. I was surprised learning how the preparation for this audacious operation was so thin. I mean, everybody knows that the Kurdish guerrilla, and I talk a lot about the Kurdish guerrilla, it is a guerrilla. It is not an army. They do not have fighter jets or tanks. Everybody points to the success of Kurds in the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but Iran is not ISIS. It is more than 90 million people country. Security services very well entrenched. It has secret police. It has an intelligence agency. It has a full professional army. I mean, it's right. It's not one guerrilla force against another guerrilla force.

37:51Exactly. So boots on the ground is not enough. I mean, you have to provide overwhelming air support. And the idea was to provide air support. But the level of commitment never even got close to happening. I mean, nothing happened. This is when the Kurdish guy told me, hey, kakitay, I mean, let's wait for the Israelis and for the Americans to get serious. Now, why it didn't happen, you know, most of the accounts explain, and I believe it's, that Erdogan didn't want such an operation to take place. As we talked about how sensitive this issue of the Kurds in Turkey, they wouldn't like any success of the Kurds, whether it is in Iraq or Syria or Iran.

38:33they wouldn't like the Americans to push the Kurds again. Success of the Kurds inside Iran, it means like uprising of the Kurds inside Turkey. And unfortunately, Erdogan is very close to Trump and has an influence over Trump. And he told Trump, call it off. And Trump decided to call it off. I mean, it is amazing. And I think, you know, but it is a bit shocking for me because it is the ABC of understanding Iran in the region. It is the ABC. It is the very basic of understanding, you know, like the idea of operating with the Kurds, how it will enrage Erdogan. So you need to decide in advance, you need to decide whether you tell it to Erdogan, whether you are waiting for his consent or doing, I don't give a damn what Erdogan is saying.

39:20I push forward no matter what. Or you're saying, I will ask Erdogan in advance and see if it is feasible at all. But you cannot like go, let's try to do something, and all of a sudden stuck in the middle. Right, and surprise Erdogan. Yeah, and there is another thing. I mean, think about Iran. I mean, it's entirely predictable that Erdogan would have this reaction. So what's the plan for anticipating the Erdogan reaction and how to either override it or manage it in some way, but not be surprised by it? Yeah, and that was happened. And there is another thing, you know, you have to take into account that Iran is a patchwork of minorities.

39:55We elaborate about the Kurds, but it is a beautiful mosaic of Kurds, of Azeris, of Baluchi, of Ahwazi, of Luri. And if one of the minority is privileged by the Americans, in this example, the Kurds, it might raise, you know, unpredicted dynamic within the other groups, jealousy, or even the possibility of civil war. And this is something that everyone who knows the very basic about Iran and the region should know. So nothing was done. The way I see it, I'm shocked not because they were thinking about the Kurds as boots on the ground. I really believe in the force of Kurds as boots on the ground with proper support and with cooperation.

40:39And there is a potential between the Kurds and other minorities because each one of the more than 20 nations in Iraq is an underground guerrilla against the regime. and they can work together, especially the Azeris, 20 million in Iran, the Kurds, about 12 million. I mean, it is a force. The Baluchi hate Tehran. The Ahwazi hate them even more. The Lory, they can work together. They're not love each other on a normal basis, but you know, when they need to operate together, they can do it. But nothing, nothing like that ever came into account. I really, really anticipating, you know, the episode with Nadav to know better what happened or did not happen.

41:20I just want to wrap here, and you've addressed some of this just now, but from your perspective, what actually went wrong with the Kurds in the context of this war against Iran? Well, regarding the Kurds, I know how great fighters they can be. But when you come to deal with Iran, you need air support because it is not fighter jets and not tanks. They didn't have it, so you have to provide it. Without air support, there is nothing to talk about. But you have to remember, because the Kurds remember, what they call the betrayal of Israel and the United States a few weeks before, after this unfortunate summit, when, according to the Kurdish perception, the U .S.

42:03and Israel decided not to do nothing about the intention of al-Julani to override their entity in northern Syria. So if I'm a Kurd, I'm telling myself, they would like me to march inside, to be the boots on the ground. And if problems occur and the plan will fail, and a lot of plans are proven to be very bad in this war, so if it goes wrong, they will kill me not by tens of thousands, by hundreds of thousands. If the besiege and the Revolutionary Guard manage to kill within one week more than 30 ,000 people, they will kill me by 100 ,000. And could I trust the American and Israel to be there? I got the experience a few weeks before, so I cannot count on them.

42:50I'm not sure that it had something to do with, you know, motivation, but it was deep inside every Kurd. Because, you know, Dan, you have to remember, a lot of the Kurds in Syria and in Iran, in Syria and in Turkey, are relatives, are family relatives. And what happened in Syria does not belong to a different nation, like a different country. It happened to my family. It is very deep in my experience, you know, and I wrote and I noted for myself, this is the way Israel and the U.S. behaved, according to the Kurdish perception. So in that sense, if I'm a Kurd, I wouldn't trust, you know, the United States and Israel if things are going wrong.

43:29Okay, Itay, we will leave it there. We encourage folks to listen to our next episode, which will be part two of this conversation, which we'll do with Nadav, which he'll lay out his reporting from the planner's perspective, especially from within Israel and the Israeli security establishment on how they intended to work with, support and deploy the Kurds. And I encourage our listeners to watch Itai's documentary, which we will link to in the show description. Itai, thank you for doing this. Thank you so much, Ned.

44:13Hi, it's Dan Sinor. Israel is heading into one of its most consequential elections. And this time, the whole world is watching closely. Hot takes and daily noise are pretty much guaranteed to populate your media diet. But as with any election, there's a deeper story about identity, religion, democracy, and what kind of country Israelis want to live in. That's why ARK Media launched Israel Votes, a special initiative across Call Me Back, For Heaven's Sake, and ARK News Daily. You'll hear from the leading candidates shaping the race, along with analysis and reporting from two of Israel's leading political analysts, ARK Media contributors Nadav Ayal and Amit Sego.

44:56Join us for Israel Votes, your front row seat to the election that could define Israel's future. Go to arkmedia.org forward slash votes to watch and listen. See you there.