135. Is The CIA Arming Kurdish Militias In Iran?

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2:54David McCloskey:somewhere in Europe. And we are joined today for a very, I think will be a very enlightening conversation about the war in Iran, and in particular, the emerging potential Kurdish angle to that conflict. We are joined today by a very special guest, Clarissa Ward, who is CNN's multi-award winning chief international correspondent who is based in London, but is now, as we will soon discover in the northern parts of Iraq. She has spent the last two decades reporting for front lines around the world from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza, and Yemen, all the way to Ukraine and Georgia during the Russian incursion in 2008.

3:34David McCloskey:Clarissa is also a good friend and is willing to join even though I sound like I have a frog in my throat. So Clarissa, thank you so much for being with us today.

3:45Clarissa Ward:Oh, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure.

3:47David McCloskey:And you are currently, I guess, on the ground in Erbil, if I'm not mistaken, in northern Iraq, which is maybe a 12 or so hour drive from Tehran. You've been doing some great reporting from there over the past week. And I guess maybe we just start with a bit of, what are you seeing on the ground right now in northern Iraq?

4:06Clarissa Ward:So what we're seeing at the moment, a number of things. Firstly, I would say we're seeing a number of drone attacks, missile strikes. Primarily, they have been focused on the remnants of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. So in January, the U.S. officially completed its withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But here in Erbil, which is in the Kurdish autonomous region, there are still U.S. troops here. And they're concentrated in a couple of different places, most notably the Erbil International Airport, but also some at the U.S. consulate and a couple of other smaller bases that are a bit more off the radar, let's say.

4:53Clarissa Ward:And so since we've arrived, we have seen regular attacks on all of these locations. What's been interesting in the last few nights, I would say, is that we have seen a real uptick in the number of attacks as well on Iranian Kurdish camps here in Iraqi Kurdistan. And this is obviously where it all starts to get really complicated for many of your listeners, I'm sure, because you have these Iranian Kurdish groups who basically have been living in Iraqi Kurdistan in camps along the border with Iran for many decades and who are now potentially poised to get involved with this conflict in a very real way on the ground.

5:47David McCloskey:We're going to talk a lot about the Kurds, but it might be helpful, actually, if we just like zoomed a way out and just said, like, who are the Kurds and why do they seem to pop up whenever we talk about Syria, when we talk about Turkey, when we talk about Iraq, we talk about Iran. It's like there's a Kurdish kind of question embroiled in all of these different countries. So maybe you could help set the table a bit for like who they are and kind of why they matter so much.

6:14Clarissa Ward:Sure. So the Kurds are a group of the estimates are between 30 to 40 million people who are spread for the most part between Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, who were promised after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a state of their own, but that state never really materialized, and who have historically often been engaged in a struggle for recognition, for autonomy, in some cases for a state of their own. I think it's important for people to understand that the Kurds are not a monolith. Their policies -

7:04David McCloskey:The opposite, maybe. Whatever the opposite of a monolith is, that's what they are.

7:09Clarissa Ward:That's what they are. Their policies and their loyalties vary widely, but many of them share this sense of being disenfranchised, often oppressed, and really seeking recognition. So when you talk about the fact that they're not a monolith, I mean, perhaps one way to illustrate that is to talk about the Iranian Kurds here in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are six different groups of Iranian Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, and all of them have different leadership, different policies, different outlooks. Some of them are separatists. Some of them would like to see Iran become a federal state and have a semi-autonomous zone.

8:01Clarissa Ward:And they've formed a coalition in recent months, perhaps in preparation for this moment. But suffice it to say, they are not a monolith. And then that's not even to mention the Iraqi Kurds, who also have a completely different perspective on what's going on. So it has always been incredibly challenging as a journalist to try to explain and lay out the history and the plight of the Kurdish people. One other thing that I think is really notable to mention for those who haven't been following closely is that the Kurds have often been a close ally of the United States historically, but most recently in Syria, fighting ISIS, particularly in the northeastern part of the country, in Iraq, in Mosul, again, fighting ISIS.

8:58Clarissa Ward:So there is a long history of cooperation with the United States. But this story is a little bit different because there are deep divisions about whether the Iraqi Kurds in particular should be working with the United States right now or whether they should be staying way out of this.

9:22David McCloskey:just one note on the complexity of it i distinctly remember co-authoring a piece at the cia when i was a very young analyst and it was a it was prior to the syrian civil war and it was a primer on syria's kurdish groups and the feedback that came back on it from someone at the nsc was there was literally the one word was this is confusing confusing was written on the draft is because there were so many different groups and sort of like political parties expressions it's like Like Gordon is probably on his way to Iraqi Kurdistan to set up another Kurdish party. Like that's how that is how fragmented it can it can get.

10:01Clarissa Ward:And they all have acronyms and the political parties have different acronyms to the militias or the fighting groups, which means you're talking multiple acronyms for the same group. And at the end of the day, I think we all need to be a little bit humble. Well, certainly I do and say, I could not possibly tell you every single acronym for every single group and historically where they have stood on on each and every conflict throughout the region.

10:31David McCloskey:So I guess let's get to the reporting that you and the team at CNN have put out in the last few days, because I think it's really striking. And I mean, essentially, it seems like, and I want you to kind of lay it out for us if you'd be so kind, but essentially, it seems like the idea that has emerged from the Trump White House and been handed over to the CIA to figure out what to do with is arming some of these Iranian Kurdish groups.

10:59Clarissa Ward:We had a meeting about three nights ago now with a senior Iranian Kurdish official, and I was very surprised. The meeting was on background, so we're not going to reveal his name or which group he's affiliated with. But he basically said to me, this is going to happen. There's going to be a ground offensive. We are going to go into Western Iran with a number of other Iranian Kurdish groups. We are going to do it with the support of the U.S. and Israel. He wouldn't say exactly what that support would look like. And we have been in touch with the White House. I immediately called some of my colleagues in D.C.

11:47Clarissa Ward:and got talking with Natasha Bertrand, Elena Treen, and Zachary Cohen, who had at the same time new reporting that the CIA has been supporting some of these groups with a view to effectively fomenting unrest in Iran and destabilizing. Iran. And honestly, David, I was kind of flabbergasted by this whole thing because anyone who has spent a long time in this region and who is watching this conflict closely can see the manifold reasons why this is fraught with risk, with complexity. There was a real question mark around why exactly the U.S. would be seeking to foment unrest in Iran, by which I mean, what is the strategic objective of facilitating or supporting some kind of a Kurdish insurgency, let's say, is the objective to bog down the Iranian military in a fight, which then, first of all, draws them to a certain area.

13:11Clarissa Ward:Maybe you have a window of opportunity to strike them. Maybe you're also creating other spaces where protesters could have the potential to come out onto the streets. Or are you talking about factionalizing a country, essentially trying to foment discord to the point where we could be talking about a failed state? And if you are thinking along those lines and you are looking at all the different possible scenarios, are you not concerned that this could backfire? Because when you speak to many Iranians who were dancing with joy at Khamenei, the supreme leader being killed, they are not interested in signing up for their country being factionalized and split apart and having different groups played off of each other.

14:06David McCloskey:Do you see any return on it? Like, is there actual upside here that could be driving the calculation, even if it's sort of fraught? Do you see any potential gain from this policy or this covert action effort?

14:21Clarissa Ward:Honestly, from where I'm standing and the conversations I have had, that upside if it is there is not immediately clear to me also one of the reasons i say that is because i had the impression talking to these iranian kurdish forces that they're not totally clear on what they are being led into potentially and i don't want to see being led into because they're autonomous in this as well, right? So what they are walking into. And, you know, I had a conversation with another senior leader today who said, we're going to need air cover, we're going to need heavy weaponry, we're going to need this, we're going to need that, all of which makes sense.

15:07Clarissa Ward:And my question was, well, if you haven't extracted any kind of promise or guarantee of those things, then what exactly is the support that you have been offered that you feel already comfortable enough to be considering going in on some kind of a ground offensive. And I think we also have to consider the possibility here, David, and if you'll permit me, I may just turn the tables for one second in a moment, that a lot of this can be psyops on some level. Sure. Yeah. Let's start making noise about a Kurdish ground offensive. Let's get everybody exercised about that. Let's get everybody focused.

15:48Clarissa Ward:Let's get everybody distracted. Because here's what I can't quite understand. I have been covering these types of stories for decades. This type of information doesn't get leaked unless somebody wants to leak it. And so my question to you is, why would - Oh, no.

16:11David McCloskey:One-way questions on this show.

16:14Clarissa Ward:Why would the CIA want to leak this?

16:19David McCloskey:So we obviously don't want to reveal any of the specific sources that your colleagues had, but are they citing CIA sources or are they citing White House or sort of broader national security community sources?

16:31Clarissa Ward:I think the language we agreed to keep it to was sources familiar with the issues. So it may well be White House sources rather than CIA sources. But I still have this nagging feeling here. And I'm not saying it's the CIA. I'm not saying it's the White House. It could well be the Israelis. But somebody is wanting this in the public domain.

16:59David McCloskey:Yeah, that's, I think, apparent just by the virtue that you're reporting exists to begin with, because someone leaked it. I guess I'd offer a couple thoughts. One is, and this is, perhaps I'm a bit biased in this regard, but as a general rule, the leaks don't come from inside CIA on these kinds of things. they come from the policy community they come from congress congressional it's like cia tends to not be the source of most of these kind of leaks so that's just be one general thought it doesn't mean they don't ever do it just in general it's much more likely on just an odds basis that it's coming from elsewhere second point the cia would absolutely which is this i guess i'll speak a little bit out of both sides of my mouth here because i do think the agency there could be people who would have an incentive to leak it here for this reason, which is, if I'm a CIA officer and I get handed a finding from the president to go and arm Iranian Kurdish groups in northern Iraq, I'm probably not going to want to do that.

18:02David McCloskey:I'm not going to see that as a covert action program that has a high probability of success, right? And frankly, we've seen this movie before. It does seem like Like sometimes there is just an arm the Kurds button that's like right there. And you're like, ooh, I'm tempted. Let's go and arm the Kurds. But then it inevitably is followed.

18:24Clarissa Ward:Abandon the Kurds.

18:25David McCloskey:By abandon the Kurds. That's the next button, right? So everybody has seen this movie before. And in particular, you know, I think one of the things I wanted to talk about was sort of potential parallels to Syria, which is a conflict that you and I both know very well. And the reason that the covert action program that eventually became overt to arm Syrian Kurds against ISIS, the reason that worked was because there wasn't a massive gap between the resources that we were going to put toward that and the objectives. Whereas if the goal here is not fighting a terrorist group in the northwestern part of Iran, but is more broadly regime change or some open ended, you know, sort of cycle of violence you want to create to just keep the regime in Tehran off balance.

19:17David McCloskey:Like, I can't see a lot of CIA officers wanting to sign up for that kind of program.

19:22Clarissa Ward:And one other thing that's notable, the New York Times following up and sort of building upon our reporting said, and again, I can't confirm this. This is just their reporting that the arming so far, it's been small arms that's been coming in to these groups. Well, I don't really understand what small arms is going to achieve. And I had an extraordinary nugget that I came across last night. Again, I couldn't quite believe it. We spoke to a car dealer, a car dealer, who said that two nights ago, well, now three nights ago, one of these Iranian Kurdish groups came into his dealership and bought 50 Toyota Land Cruiser LC71s.