Trump’s Real Plan for Iran Might Be Coming Into View |
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If President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can’t force regime change in Iran or control what comes afterward, it seems their Plan B is to break the country into pieces, maybe spark a sectarian civil war, or in any case spawn such internal strife that it can no longer threaten its neighbors.
That’s one conclusion to derive—the only one that makes much sense—from the many news reports that the two are encouraging, and actively opening the way for, Kurdish militias to join the fight and foment an uprising against the Tehran regime.
For stirring trouble and fighting bad guys, there are few more formidable forces than the Kurds. Soldiers, aid workers, and journalists who have observed the Kurds in action tend to come away starstruck. In both Iraq wars (the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion), as well as the ensuing counterinsurgency fights against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Kurds were our most skilled, ferocious, and effective allies. And they were driven not just by the region’s typical assortment of ethnic hatreds and territorial disputes, but also by an ancient cause of justice and independence. (Some surprising supporters of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, notably my old friend and Slate colleague the late Christopher Hitchens, were especially moved by hopes that ousting Saddam would open the way for Kurdish independence.)
In the wake of World War I, the Sykes-Picot Agreement—the pact between Britain and France to redraw the map of the Middle East by carving the crumbling Ottoman Empire into separate spheres of influence—created whole new states and declared Jerusalem a free city with open entry for Jews. But it gave no strip of land to the Kurds, who now number between 25 and 40 million people (no one has taken an official count), leaving them scattered across........