Israel–Kurdistan Region Relations

Military cooperation, support for Kurdish self-determination, and oil commerce have connected Israel with Iraqi Kurdish leaders despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations.[1][2] The historical relationship developed with Kurdish movements before the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), making the distinction between assistance to Kurdish forces and relations with the later regional administration important.[6] Israeli security and intelligence personnel supplied training and humanitarian assistance, helped Kurdish leaders develop contacts with Western governments, and obtained information about Iraq in return.[1]

Kurdish self-government developed after the 1991 Gulf War, and the regional administration was established in 1992; by 2005, the KRG had received official recognition within Iraq.[7][6] The regional government acquired many characteristics of a de facto state, including its own institutions and international commercial contacts, without becoming an independent country able to conduct formal diplomacy on its own.[7][4]

Relations with Israel have consequently combined cooperation with caution toward Baghdad, Turkey, Iran, and Arab states.[7] Israel’s close relationship with Turkey constrained improved Kurdish ties during the 1990s, while Kurdish leaders have repeatedly weighed the benefits of Israeli support against its regional political costs.[7][8] A 2009 poll found that 71 percent of Iraqi Kurdish respondents favored establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, although Kurdish attitudes were not uniform and also included sympathy for Palestinians.[1] The relationship therefore encompasses favorable public sentiment and practical exchanges without constituting a formal interstate alliance.[1][4]

Secret contacts between diplomat Maurice Fischer and Kurds took place during the 1940s, while the Jewish Agency’s political department sought to strengthen the Kurdish national movement in response to the Iraqi threat.[9] Israel’s broader policy of cultivating relationships around the regional periphery took shape in the late 1950s, partly as an answer to its isolation.[7] Links with regional minorities formed part of this approach and helped shape assistance to Iraqi Kurdish forces.[7]

Iran facilitated Israeli assistance to Kurdish rebels from the mid-1960s, providing the geographical and political access on which much of the operation depended.[10][7] Israel supplied money and material assistance and sent military and intelligence advisers to train Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran.[10] Some Kurdish personnel may also have received training in Israel.[10] A former Mossad official recalled a mission from 1965 to 1975 that supplied weapons and trained Kurdish officers, while Israel Hayom reported that Kurdish leaders, including Mustafa Barzani, visited Israel.[11][6] After a 1966 battle south of Erbil, Israel built a field hospital for Kurdish fighters.[6]

The relationship reached a particularly active stage between 1968 and 1975, during Mustafa Barzani’s rebellion against Iraq’s Baath regime.[1] Israeli personnel trained Kurdish forces, provided humanitarian assistance, and helped establish channels to Western governments, especially in Washington.[1] Israel benefited from intelligence about Iraq, while the Kurds gained practical assistance and access to external political networks.[1]

A U.S. memorandum recording visitors’ account of an April 1969 meeting with Barzani reported that Israel supplied arms while Iran provided food and other materials.[12] Barzani complained that assistance diminished when Iran and Iraq moved toward rapprochement and increased when tensions between them were high.[12] His desire for American backing was expressed in the same account, which relayed his wish for Kurdistan to become “the 51st state.”[12] The dependence of Kurdish supplies on Iranian policy was already a central vulnerability in the relationship.[12]

On March 4–5, 1970, Idriss Barzani and other Kurdish representatives met Israeli representatives in Tehran.[13] The Israelis promised anti-aircraft weapons and light artillery, agreed to provide armored cars and personnel carriers, and discussed training Kurdish crews to operate tanks.[13] Iranian intelligence chief Nematollah Nasseri endorsed an Israeli proposal to renew fighting in northern Iraq.[13] Iranian and Israeli financial assistance to Barzani during the previous month totaled 1.2 million Iraqi dinars, equated in the contemporary intelligence account to US$3.36 million.[13]

Israeli assistance during the 1970s included light weapons, ammunition, and anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, with much of the aid passing through Iran with the authorities’ knowledge.[7] The same INSS study links this assistance to efforts to facilitate the escape through northern Iraq of approximately 5,000 Jews who remained in the country.[7] The Washington Institute similarly reports that Kurds helped protect and assist the migration of remaining Iraqi Jews to Israel.[1]

The 1975 Iran–Iraq agreement ended Iranian military assistance to the Kurdish rebellion and sharply reduced the rebels’ options.[10] Because much Israeli assistance had passed through Iran, the loss of Iranian support damaged the relationship’s operational foundations.[10][7] Humanitarian assistance nevertheless formed part of later contacts: Israel transferred aid to northern Iraq through Turkey during the 1980s.[6]

After the 1991 Gulf War, growing Kurdish autonomy created a potential opening for cooperation with Israel, but Israeli–Turkish ties during the 1990s hindered closer relations.[7] Following the 2003 war and the strengthening of Kurdish autonomy, Israeli and Turkish interests concerning the Kurds diverged: Turkey was alarmed by Kurdish independence aspirations, while Israeli policy discussions treated possible Kurdish statehood more favorably.[7]

In 2004, Masoud Barzani met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the two announced cooperation in some areas.[6] Barzani linked the possibility of an Israeli consulate in Erbil to Iraq first establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.[6] His 2005 statement that relations with Israel were “not a crime” was another public indication of openness.[1] In 2008, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani publicly shook hands with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Greece, explaining that he had acted as the head of a Kurdish political party rather than as Iraq’s president.[1]

Benjamin Netanyahu first publicly voiced support for an independent Kurdish state in June 2014 and repeated that support as the Kurdistan Region prepared for its September 2017 referendum.[1] That position contrasted with the preference of the United States and much of the international community for maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity.[1]

The independence referendum took place on September 25, 2017. INSS reported that 93 percent of voters supported independence.[14] Baghdad, Iran, Turkey, and much of the international community, particularly the United States, opposed the initiative.[14] On October 16–17, Iraqi government forces retook oil-rich Kirkuk, which Kurdish forces had controlled since 2014.[14] The Peshmerga withdrawal followed an agreement between Iraqi authorities and leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the loss of Kirkuk severely damaged the economic basis of the independence effort.[14]

Oil purchases became one of the largest practical connections between Israel and the Kurdistan Region.[2] Over the decade preceding April 2023, Israel was a major buyer of Kurdish crude exported through southern Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.[2] Sold at a discount, the oil generated revenue that helped sustain the region’s partial autonomy from Iraq’s federal government.[2] Some shipments were processed at refineries in Haifa and Ashdod, while others passed onward from Eilat to customers in Asia.[2]

Between early May and August 11, 2015, Israeli refineries and oil companies imported an estimated 19 million barrels from Iraqi Kurdistan, worth nearly $1 billion.[15] The volume was equivalent to approximately 77 percent of average Israeli oil demand during that period.[15] The transactions involved secretive prepayment arrangements brokered by large oil traders, providing Kurdish authorities with cash while their forces fought the Islamic State.[15] A senior Kurdish adviser explained the commercial priority: “We do not care where the oil goes once we have delivered it to the traders,” adding that revenue was needed to fund Peshmerga operations and pay civil servants.[15]

Later estimates placed Israeli imports of Kurdish crude at 194,000 barrels per day in January 2023 and an average of 70,000 barrels per day during 2022.[2] Even the lower figure represented approximately 16 percent of total Kurdish exports.[2] These figures describe different reporting periods rather than a single sustained import level, and Israeli reporting restrictions prevented a definitive tally of transactions and pipeline operations.[2] The unusually high January figure may have been an anomaly.[2]

In March 2023, an international court ruled in Baghdad’s favor in a dispute concerning Turkey’s allowance of Kurdish oil exports through Ceyhan.[2] Oil flows from the region to Turkey had not resumed by April, while a tentative arrangement would allow Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization to market Kurdish crude.[2] Because Baghdad regards trade with Israel as illegal, placing sales under federal marketing authority threatened the commercial channel that had linked Israeli buyers with Kurdish exports.[2]

Business links extended beyond oil purchases.[7] By 2014, Israeli security and telecommunications companies were active in northern Iraq despite Iraq’s designation as a hostile country.[7] Oil and natural-gas resources offered potential foundations for the region’s economic future, but disagreements with Baghdad over export authority, concessions, and revenue made investment and independent transactions politically sensitive.[7] A June 2010 business report described a visit by Israel Corp. chairman Idan Ofer to the region the previous month, including meetings with Kurdish Vice President Kosrat Rasul, his son Darbaz, and other local figures in Sulaymaniyah.[16] It also described consideration of a Kirkuk refinery project with European businesspeople; Ofer’s spokesman declined to comment on his private business affairs.[16]

Public and civic contacts supplied another form of engagement.[8] In 2009, Dawood Baghestani, a former head of the regional human rights commission, launched the Kurdish- and English-language magazine Israel-Kurd, with a circulation of approximately 1,500.[8] He said its purpose was to encourage Kurdish Jews in Israel to return to Iraqi Kurdistan and described four visits he had made to Israel, including a clandestine journey in 1967.[8] The magazine represented an individual initiative rather than an announced KRG policy.[8] In 2013, a university debate in Iraqi Kurdistan considered whether the region should establish “diplomatic” relations with Israel; the pro-relations team won and received applause.[4]

In 2021, more than 300 Iraqi Sunni and Shia figures, including tribal leaders and some government officials, met in Erbil and called for normalization with Israel and Iraqi participation in the Abraham Accords.[17] An American nongovernmental organization coordinated the gathering, which Baghdad repudiated; firings and arrests followed the declaration.[17] The Kurdistan Region could not independently establish true diplomatic relations because it was not an independent country.[4]

In May 2022, Iraq’s parliament passed legislation criminalizing normalization and relations with Israel, including business ties.[5] The measure received support from 275 of the legislature’s 329 members, and violations could carry death or life imprisonment.[5] It imposed a severe legal constraint on potential commercial and political contacts involving the Kurdistan Region as well as the rest of Iraq.[5]

Jewish communal ties give the relationship a dimension beyond strategic cooperation.[18][3] An estimated community of close to 300,000 Jews of Kurdish origin mostly resides in Israel.[18] In May 2015, the Kurdish Parliament established government departments dealing with seven religious minorities, including Jews.[3] Sherzad Omer Mamsani became Kurdistan’s Jewish Affairs Representative later that year, with a stated role that included fostering positive relations with Israel and Jewish people worldwide.[3] His responsibilities concerning Jews of Kurdish origin represented a communal connection, not a formal diplomatic arrangement with Israel.[18]

In its discussion of these connections, Mosaic portrays a tendency among Israelis to regard Kurds as kindred spirits and identifies Kurdish Jews in Israel as an important perspective on that affinity.[19] The same commentary describes most Kurdish Jews as having lived in Iraq before leaving en masse with Iraqi Jewry during the 1950s, and characterizes the community as Aramaic-speaking, with widespread illiteracy persisting into the twentieth century.[19] Within the Kurdistan Region itself, a Ynetnews report said that a congregation called the Aramaic Organization, representing Jewish families, was recognized by the KRG and estimated that about 40 Jewish families remained in the area.[11]

Historically, cooperation offered Iraqi Kurdish leaders military assistance, humanitarian support, and channels to Western capitals, while providing Israel with information about Iraq and a relationship with a non-Arab regional movement.[1] Assistance to escaping Iraqi Jews added an immediate humanitarian purpose to the strategic connection.[1][7] Later, oil purchases supplied the Kurdish authorities with revenue and Israeli buyers with discounted crude, translating the relationship into a substantial commercial exchange.[2]

Support for relations with Israel has not required agreement on every regional issue.[1] Alongside the favorable 2009 polling result, many Kurds expressed empathy for Palestinians, including through a perceived shared experience of statelessness.[1] Kurdish leaders also faced competing practical needs: in 2009, Kurdish parliamentarian Mahmud Othman argued that closer Israeli ties would not be pragmatic because the region needed relationships with Arab states, Iran, and Turkey.[8]

Formal diplomacy remains constrained by the region’s status within Iraq: because it is not an independent country, it cannot establish true diplomatic relations on its own.[4] A later Ynetnews report quoted a source working with the KRG as saying that the region had good relations with Israel, while Kurdish analyst Kali Kareem said there was no official knowledge of current Israeli presence or cooperation.[11] The contrast illustrates the distinction between reported or informal affinity and official diplomatic relations.[11]

Israel’s public support for Kurdish independence in 2017 exposed a tension between welcome encouragement and potentially damaging visibility.[1][20] Kurdish leaders welcomed support amid widespread international opposition but were cautious about celebrating it because neighboring states associated Kurdish independence with Zionism.[1] A Kurdish official complained that overt Israeli statements helped adversaries portray the Kurds as a “second Israel in the region.”[20] Netanyahu subsequently instructed Israeli ministers not to comment further because of the issue’s sensitivity.[20]

The strategic consequences prompted disagreement in policy commentary.[21][22] In a November 2017 assessment, Ari Heistein argued that the KRG had overestimated American support and Kurdish internal solidarity while underestimating international opposition, and warned that the failed bid could harm Israel’s regional position.[21] Norman Bailey had advocated active Israeli support for Iraqi and Syrian Kurds in 2016 while warning that closer ties could complicate rapprochement with Turkey; after the referendum, he argued that the United States had abandoned the KRG.[22][23] These were competing assessments of policy choices, not formal alliance commitments.[21][22]

Historical covert cooperation also requires distinctions between documented assistance, individual intelligence reports, and later interpretation.[10][13] The detailed proposals in the March 1970 intelligence cable came from an undisclosed source, while the 1975 assessment documented the end of Iranian military aid and the resulting reduction in Kurdish options without establishing that every form of Israeli assistance ended.[13][10] Neither those historical operations nor later commercial dealings establish the existence of formal Israel–KRG diplomatic relations.[1][10]