Don’t join in, US tells Kurds

President Donald Trump said he has told Kurdish forces not to enter the Iran war as the United States and Israel continue launching strikes against Tehran.

"We’re very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is. I have ruled that out, I don’t want the Kurds going in," Trump said yesterday.

Israel’s military had been working to open the way for Kurdish forces to take up positions in Iran’s northwest, with the ultimate aim of encouraging armed Kurds to rise up against Tehran.

Trump said he "had a good relation" with the Kurds and they have told him they were "willing to go in" to Iran.

"But we really, I’ve told them, I don’t want them to go," he added.

Airstrikes have targeted Iranian military and law enforcement in the largely Kurdish region next to northern Iraq, where US aerial protection in 1991 helped establish a semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdish administration in Erbil. — TCA