Why are Kurdish groups in Iraq being attacked amid the US-Iran flare-up?

Why are Kurdish groups in Iraq being attacked amid the US-Iran flare-up? Submitted by Alex MacDonald on Thu, 07/30/2026 - 13:16 Dozens of Iranian Kurds have been killed following Israeli reports of a planned operation to overthrow the government Female Kurdish Peshmerga fighters affiliated with Iran's separatist Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) are pictured at a base in an undisclosed location in Erbil province, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on 1 December 2022 (Safin Hamid / AFP) Off As the US has continued its war against Iran , the Islamic Republic has responded by launching retaliatory strikes across the Gulf, mainly targeting American assets. At the same time, Iranian forces or those aligned with them are widely believed to have been carrying out attacks on Iranian Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq.