Iraq’s Kurds are against joining the US attacks on Iran, and have voiced concerns about being left facing Iranian retaliation with no ground or air defense support, Axios reported on Saturday.

The CIA began working to arm Kurdish forces hostile to the Islamic Republic after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran last Saturday, according to CNN. While US President Donald Trump initially voiced support for Kurds getting involved in the conflict, he backpedaled on the idea on Saturday.

“The Kurds must not be the tip of the spear in this conflict,” Axios wrote, citing a senior official from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Iraq.

The Iraqi Kurds are “staying neutral” as “there is no clarity” for them on whether Washington is aiming for a full regime change in Iran or just a “change in personnel,” the KRG official reportedly said. Trump has stated that the US will be involved in deciding who leads Iran in the future but has not elaborated on how this would work.

According to Axios, the Kurdish regional forces don’t think regime change as possible without Washington deploying a ground invasion, and they don’t see the US putting boots on the ground.

Israel has been far more aggressive both in the conflict and in “pushing Iranian Kurds” to join the fray, the KRG official reportedly said.

“In the past, two major uprisings were not supported” by the US, the outlet wrote, citing Amir Karimi, co-chair of the Kurdistan Free Life Party, the Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Widespread Western-backed protests wracked Iran in 2022-2023 and earlier this year, yet failed to unseat the leadership in Tehran.

In part, Kurds are staying back due to fears that the US will abandon them again, Axios cited another Kurdish official as saying. “We have trust issues from the past,” he reportedly said, voicing concern over a potential retaliation by Tehran.

The regional Kurdish forces in Syria served as the main US proxy against the Islamic State during the country’s brutal civil war, which ended with the ouster of Bashar Assad by Ahmed al-Sharaa – a former Al-Qaeda-linked militant leader.

Rapprochement between the US and the new government in Damascus has left the Kurds with no military support in multiple bloody clashes with the new government forces.