Exclusive - The Kurds and the Iranian Revolution: An Endless Series of Tragedies

Iranian Kurds hold a rally in support of an independence referendum in the town of Bahirka north of Erbil in 2017. (AFP)
Iranian Kurds hold a rally in support of an independence referendum in the town of Bahirka north of Erbil in 2017. (AFP)
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Exclusive - The Kurds and the Iranian Revolution: An Endless Series of Tragedies

Iranian Kurds hold a rally in support of an independence referendum in the town of Bahirka north of Erbil in 2017. (AFP)
Iranian Kurds hold a rally in support of an independence referendum in the town of Bahirka north of Erbil in 2017. (AFP)

When Iranians rose up against the Shah rule 40 years ago many hoped that the revolution would pave the way for fair rule that would provide the oppressed people with freedom, democracy and a dignified life.

They never imagined that clerics, hiding behind their religious garb, would impose a life that is no better than death. The revolution, according to many Iranians, transformed from a glimmer of hope and salvation to an endless series of tragedies.

After four decades, the majority of the Iranians have come to realize that the revolution did away with real men and that the high hopes they harbored were dashed by the policies of the current regime. The regime abused religious edicts, or fatwas, and Khomeini’s guidance to exploit the political vacuum and chaos caused by the revolution.

Politburo member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) Taimur Mustafaei said that the revolt was the fruit of the Iranian people’s struggle against the oppressive Shah regime.

“Khomeini and his officials altered its course, however, to establish a dictatorship, leaving the people in despair about ever achieving freedom, democracy and legitimate national rights,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“With time, the regime transformed the country into a large prison that is filled with terror, oppression and fear. Its failed policies have embroiled Iran in a stifling economic crisis that is weighing down on all the people,” he continued.

A vast majority of Iranians, especially Kurds, whom the regime forced out of Iran, believe that the Wilayet al-Faqih system was only good at oppression.

It is now time for change though, they said.

Mustafaei said that the PDKI realized the malicious intentions of the Khomeini regime during the early weeks of the revolution. He explained that the party had dispatched to Tehran a delegation to hold talks with the new regime figures about the Kurdish people’s rights.

These demands were met with crises and bloody clashes in liberated Kurdish regions that were incited by the regime in order to obstruct the talks, he revealed.

“Khomeini went to great lengths to harm the Kurdish people and undermine their rights. He started by creating incitement in several Kurdish cities, such as Naqadeh and Paveh, that led to the arrest of hundreds of unarmed civilians,” he remarked

“He followed this up with his notorious fatwa to his followers to wage jihad against the Kurds,” he said. “He incited them to commit massacres and mass executions against Muslim Kurds.”

“We were therefore, left with no other choice but resistance,” Mustafaei said.

The repercussions of Khomeini’s fatwa persist to this day despite the four decades that have passed. The Kurds are still victim of all forms of oppression, he stressed.

“They are treated by authorities as enemies and dozens of their youth are executed annually for the simple request of demanding their people’s rights,” he lamented.

There is hope, however, he added, saying that “all the factors needed to change the regime are now available.”

He cited the people’s anger against the regime and the protests they staged last year. He noted the regime’s failure in resolving the country’s crises, especially economic ones, as well as the world’s consensus that the regime must be removed.

The main obstacle in achieving change is the lack of a unified political opposition that shares a vision of Iran’s future in the post-Khomeini regime era, Mustafaei said.

He acknowledged that Iran has turned into a source of problems in the region and entire world. It appears that the United States is aware of this danger, but does not seem serious about toppling the regime.

Change should take place from within Iran with foreign support, he stressed. “We are ready to take part in any foreign or internal efforts to eliminate the current regime.”

“The new regime must be based on a federal democratic system otherwise the problems we are suffering from now will arise again in the future,” he warned.



Donald Trump Has Sweeping Plans for 2nd Administration. Here's What He's Proposed

FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
TT

Donald Trump Has Sweeping Plans for 2nd Administration. Here's What He's Proposed

FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.

The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America's international role.

Trump's agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.

A look at what Trump has proposed, according to The Associated Press:

Immigration “Build the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the effort. Still, Trump has been scant on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it targeted only people in the US illegally. He’s pitched “ideological screening” for would-be entrants, ending birth-right citizenship (which almost certainly would require a constitutional change), and said he’d reinstitute first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants from certain majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.

Abortion Trump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, the GOP platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level.

Still, Trump has not said explicitly that he would veto national abortion restrictions if they reached his desk. And in an example of how the conservative movement might proceed with or without Trump, anti-abortion activists note that the GOP platform still asserts that a fetus should have due process protections under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. That constitutional argument is a roadmap for conservatives to seek a national abortion ban through federal courts.

Taxes Trump’s tax policies broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. That’s mostly due to his promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul, with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15% from the current 21%. That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping Inflation Reduction Act levies that finance energy measures intended to combat climate change.

Those policies notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working- and middle class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and overtime wages from income taxes. It’s noteworthy, however, that his proposal on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could give a back-door tax break to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tip income — a prospect that at its most extreme could see hedge-fund managers or top-flight attorneys taking advantage of a policy that Trump frames as being designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.

Tariffs and trade Trump’s posture on international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods — and in some speeches has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an August 2020 executive order requiring that the Food and Drug Administration buy “essential” medications only from U.S. companies. He pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the US by Chinese buyers.

DEI, LGBTQ and civil rights Trump has called for rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal funding as leverage.

On transgender rights, Trump promises generally to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.

Regulation, federal bureaucracy and presidential power The president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges precipitous drops in US households’ utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration — even though U.S energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations — though most construction rules come from state and local government. He also says he would end “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”

The approach would in many ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would come more directly from the White House.

He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and, potentially, impose a chilling effect on those who remain.

Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.

As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered details, any such move would represent a momentous change to how the US economic and monetary systems work.

Education The federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration. That does not mean that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal funding as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

In higher education, Trump proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist Maniacs and lunatics” he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts. That almost certainly would end up in protracted legal fights.

As in other policy areas, Trump isn’t actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated endowment money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without a tuition charges. “It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid Trump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tip and overtime wages might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for Social Security and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid but his first administration, in general, defaulted to approving state requests for waivers of various federal rules and it broadly endorsed state-level work requirements for recipients.

Affordable Care Act and Health Care As he has since 2015, Trump calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a plan.” In the latter stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of pesticides used in US agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again."

Climate and energy Trump, who claims falsely that climate change is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner energy designed to reduce US reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy policy – and transportation infrastructure spending – anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not oppose electric vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage EV market development. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.

Workers’ rights Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring America’s workers. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In an Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, “I’m telling you, you shouldn’t pay those dues.”

National defense and America’s role in the world Trump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the US has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield — an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and top US military brass. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “see on television.” He repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.