Early in the ongoing war against Iran, the Trump administration and its ally, Israel, believed they could foment a popular uprising to topple the Iranian regime. Part of that plan involved arming Kurdish fighters to infiltrate Iran from their locations in Iraq.
The idea had intuitive logic. Kurdish fighters have built a reputation as capable battlefield partners of the U.S. military in recent years, particularly in the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. Kurdish groups already maintain networks along the Iran–Iraq border and inside Iran. The marriage of their reputation and experience with U.S. capabilities, such as weapons, funding, training, intelligence, and air support, would seem to hold great potential for advancing
Yet proxy warfare has a long and uneven history. A examined four cases of United States-proxy relationships in modern conflicts and found that while such arrangements can produce meaningful military effects, they also frequently fall short of Washington’s expectations. When applied to the possibility of arming Kurdish groups against Iran, the lessons from that research suggest that the administration’s more recent decision to abandon its proxy plans is a prudent one.
Proxy Appeal
For U.S. policymakers, proxy warfare offers an appealing blend of strategic ambition and operational restraint — an approach that has been described as “warfare on the cheap.” Supporting a local partner can allow the United States to exert military pressure on an adversary without committing large numbers of U.S. ground forces. Proxies may bring valuable advantages, including local knowledge, political legitimacy within their communities, and the ability to operate in environments that are difficult for external militaries. They also offer the option of more easily and quickly walking away from a conflict that ceases to be politically or strategically advantageous for the sponsor.
The United States also has a long history of proxy warfare. Notable recent cases include the U.S. military’s reliance on Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces to lead the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, the efforts of CIA “Jawbreaker” teams and U.S. special operations forces to empower Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban, the CIA’s arming of Afghan mujahideen fighters in the wake of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and CIA support to Hmong guerrilla fighters in Laos as part of the Vietnam war in the 1960s. In each of these cases, arguments can be made that the partnership advanced American interests at substantially lower cost than the use of conventional U.S. military forces would have. Arguments can also be made, however, that the second- and third-order effects of these partnerships were in some ways difficult to foresee and at times counterproductive to long-term U.S. interests — the most notable example being the emergence of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from the Afghan proxy war against the Soviets. Ruminations from unnamed administration officials have suggested that a marriage of U.S. capabilities and Kurdish proxies could result in even more substantial missions. This includes trying to distract Iranian military units from violently suppressing civilian uprisings, opening a new front in the war to stretch Iran’s military capabilities thin, or even seizing territory.
As these examples illustrate, it is easy for imaginations to run wild with the possibilities of employing local forces that are capable, motivated, and plausibly deniable. But an examination of historical cases tells us that proxy warfare is rarely a simple transaction in which a sponsor provides resources in return for a favorable outcome on the battlefield. Rather, it is a political and military partnership shaped by the interests and capabilities of both sides. Differences in those aspects create a host of challenges, including issues of alignment, control, capability, and timelines.
Alignment: A Common Enemy Is Not Enough
One of the clearest findings from our research is that proxy relationships are most effective when sponsors and proxies share not only a common enemy but also broadly compatible political goals. Where those interests diverge, tensions often emerge that limit the effectiveness of the partnership. In the case of Kurds and Iran, this challenge is difficult to ignore. Many Kurdish militant groups opposing Tehran ultimately seek some measure of Kurdish political autonomy or even independence. While using the Kurds to help weaken Iran may align with U.S. objectives in the short term, the long-term political goals of Kurdish movements could create substantial complications for Washington.
Supporting Kurdish insurgents in Iran could, for example, strain relations with regional allies and partners. While the announcement in January that the United States no longer wants those Kurdish proxies to serve as its primary anti-Islamic State force in Syria was welcome news to Ankara, the potential for arming another Kurdish faction in the region is unlikely to sit well there. U.S. support to Kurdish fighters against Iran would also place the Iraqi government in a difficult position, as such forces would likely need to launch cross-border incursions from within Iraqi territory. . Providing material support to Kurdish armed groups in Iran could also have an unintended rally-around-the-flag effect, increasing popular support for the existing regime.
Tensions arising from such political misalignments illustrate a recurring principal-agent problem in proxy warfare: While sponsors often pursue limited and carefully defined objectives, their proxies frequently have much broader political ambitions. While Iranian
Control: Influence Has Limits
A logical expectation is that a sponsor’s ability to control a proxy should be directly related to the degree of support provided. But our study. For example, in each of the cases we examined, the proxy committed significant human rights abuses. It is hard to control proxies because they have their own leadership and incentive structures, internal politics, cultural norms, and strategic calculations.
Compounding this difficulty are two additional considerations. First, sponsors typically want to provide a proxy the minimum amount of support possible. Second, the required degree of support for successful is often inversely proportional to the inherent capability of the proxy. In other words, sponsors prefer capable proxies, but the more capable and autonomous a proxy force becomes, the harder it can be for the sponsor to direct its behavior. In practice, this means proxies sometimes take actions that sponsors did not anticipate or do not fully support. These might include attacks that escalate a conflict, operations that produce civilian casualties, or attempts to seize and hold territory that provoke regional backlash. Further compounding the challenges of the current case is the fact the Trump administration has not publicly articulated its political goals for the war.
In the case of Iran, the Kurdish groups under consideration by the White House have a range of capabilities. But while they claim to have formed a united front, others argue they are fragmented, with multiple organizations operating across the Iran–Iraq border and within the broader Kurdish political landscape. For example, Coordinating the activities of multiple groups, both now and as a proxy campaign unfolds — and ensuring they pursue objectives aligned with — would likely prove more difficult than a priori logic might suggest. That U.S. strategy continues to evolve in real time only exacerbates this challenge.
Capability: Effective Fighters, Limited Leverage
Kurdish forces have particularly in irregular warfare environments. Their experience fighting insurgent groups and defending difficult terrain could make them useful partners in conducting raids, ambushes, and other forms of guerrilla activity against Iranian forces. But tactical competence should not be confused with strategic leverage. , as well as decades of experience suppressing insurgencies in its border regions. Kurdish militant groups opposing Iran are relatively small and fragmented by comparison. They would likely not receive any guarantees of long-term protection from the United States. And whether they would believe such guarantees after prior Kurdish experiences with Washington is another question.
As a result, even with external support, Kurdish forces would likely face substantial limits on the scale of operations they could sustain. Our research suggests that proxy forces are most effective when employed in roles that match their capabilities — particularly irregular warfare activities such as harassment, sabotage, intelligence gathering, and limited insurgent operations. Expecting such groups to function as a surrogate conventional army capable of seizing and holding significant territory inside Iran is unrealistic.
The Timeline Problem
Another consistent finding from our study is that proxy warfare rarely produces rapid results. Sponsors often enter these relationships expecting relatively quick wins, but successful proxy campaigns frequently unfold over much longer time horizons. Reasons for this include often lengthy periods of training, equipping, organizing, and coordinating local partners — activities that typically span months and years, rather than the varying
If the United States were to arm Kurdish groups to fight Iran, policymakers should therefore expect a prolonged effort rather than a quick strategic payoff, as the time required to produce meaningful pressure on the Iranian state could easily outlast the immediate phase of the conflict — and the priorities of the administration. Whether a longer term, more deliberate campaign to build Kurdish pressure in Iran’s western regions makes sense depends greatly on unclear U.S. strategic objectives.
A Tool, Not a Strategy
As our research shows, proxy warfare can provide useful operational advantages when integrated into a broader strategy and when expectations about its likely effects remain realistic. But such hypothetical advantages should be weighed against the substantial difficulties that come with using proxies in practice.
In principle, Kurdish armed groups with substantial U.S. support hold the potential to help create localized pressure on Iranian security forces, collect intelligence on developments inside Iran, or disrupt specific military activities in border regions. In those roles — consistent with the strengths of irregular forces — they may be able to contribute meaningfully to a broader campaign. But in practice, proxy warfare rarely delivers decisive results on its own and it often breeds unintended or unwanted knock-on effects. Our research suggests that proxy warfare is best understood as a single tool in a toolkit — one that can amplify other forms of military, political, economic, and diplomatic pressure but rarely determines the outcome of a conflict on its own.
As the United States considers its options against Iran, the lessons of past proxy wars offer a cautionary reminder: Local proxies can be valuable partners, but they are never simply instruments of external strategy. They pursue their own interests, operate under their own constraints, and often produce outcomes that sponsors cannot fully predict or control. That reality does not make proxy warfare impossible. But it does make it inherently uncertain, especially in a war as complex as the one now unfolding with Iran.
Jonathan Schroden, Ph.D., is the chief research officer at the Center for Naval Analyses Corporation, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He is also a non-resident senior fellow with the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute.
Zack Gold is a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses Corporation. His work focuses on security cooperation, and assessment, monitoring, and evaluation of efforts to increase U.S. military access in the Middle East, the Caribbean and Latin America, and West Africa.
The views in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for Naval Analyses Corporation, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.
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