‘I’d Be All ​For It’: Trump Encourages Iranian Kurds to Go On The Offensive

President Donald Trump told Reuters on Thursday that it would be “wonderful” if Iranian Kurdish forces conducted a ground invasion inside of Iran.

“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all ​for it,” Trump told Reuters by phone. Reuters added of their discussion:

When asked if the U.S. would provide or had offered air cover, he responded, “I can’t tell you that,” but added that the objective for the Kurds would be “to win.”

“If they’re ​going to do that, that’s good,” Trump added.

MS NOW’s Ana Cabrera discussed the possibility of Trump arming Kurdish fighters in Iran with her panel on Thursday morning.

“David, you’ve been reporting on the possibility of the U.S. arming Iranian Kurds on the ground. What are you learning?” she asked senior national security reporter David Rohde.

“What we’re talking about is possibly these are Iranian Kurds who live just outside of Iran in northern Iraq, and there’s been reporting that there was a CIA effort to begin arming them and possibly sending them over the border into Iraq,” Rohde replied, adding:

Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, said yesterday that Donald Trump has not given any order for them to enter Iraq, but I think this is a card that the U.S. could possibly play. Now the reporting is only that it’s small arms, but the idea would be they could go in and possibly draw some Iranian military units away.

But I want to caution: a senior U.S. intelligence official said the Kurds—the Iranian Kurds—represent only, you know, 10 to 15 percent of the entire population of Iran. They cannot single-handedly topple the government in Iran. They’re just not big enough. They would need many other groups to join them. So it’s just another possible development that they would cross into Iran. Again, our reporting is that that has not happened yet.

“Yet, Colonel, we’ve seen this sort of strategy in Iraq. What are the risks of arming the Kurds?” Cabrera followed up, turning to retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs.

“Well, not much risk to us. We heard that they have small arms and automatic weapons—tactical weapons. And there are two things to think about this. First of all, as we’ve heard, there’s an insufficient number of Kurds to actually take on the Iranian army successfully in any case. They’re not properly armed or trained, and there are not enough of them,” Jacobs replied, adding:

Second, you have to run the tape forward, and even if we did use the Kurds in order to have a ground attack on the Iranian army, how does that play out? In the end, interestingly, it’s the Iranian Army and, in particular, the Republican Guard—the lynchpin in whatever happens in Iran. In the end, the theocracy is in business, at least partially, if not almost wholly, because of the support of the army. And if the theocracy is going to be brought down, it’ll only be with the concurrence and complicity of the Iranian army. And that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon, with or without the Kurds.

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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