'Mighty US' must talk with Iran, Iraqi Kurdish leader says - Middle East Eye

The US needs to stop treating Iran as if it is governed by "mad mullahs" and engage in dialogue with the Islamic Republic, which is emerging "stronger but different" from the US-Israeli war, a senior Iraqi Kurdish official said on Thursday.

"Iranians are often misunderstood in the West. This notion of mad mullahs is far from the truth," Bafel Talabani said at a Strategic Forum in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Sulaymaniyah.

"We don't find it difficult talking to the Iranians," he said. "As an ally of Mr Trump and, strangely, an ally of the Iranians [I say] the mighty US can do it," he added.

Talabani leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is the dominant political party in southeastern Iraqi Kurdistan.

The PUK's administrative zone accounts for most of the region's long border with Iran.

The PUK has historically enjoyed close ties to Tehran, but that relationship came under strain earlier this year after US President Donald Trump and his advisers tried to recruit Talabani and other Kurdish leaders to support a Kurdish insurgency in Iran.

Talabani eventually decided not to intervene.

A senior Kurdish official in Sulaymaniyah told Middle East Eye that the PUK warned Iranian opposition groups against launching attacks on Iran at the time, saying they were sure to fail. 

Tehran has been pressuring Iraqi Kurdistan to clamp down on Iranian Kurdish opposition groups. In a meeting in September with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Talabani promised not to allow Iraqi Kurdistan to become "a haven for harming or threatening" the Islamic Republic.

Talabani said that Iran was emerging from the US-Israeli war "stronger, but different". Recounting a recent trip he made to Iran, he offered a very different assessment to that proposed by members of the Trump administration who have characterised Iran as on the verge of economic collapse.

"I thought I was in London," Talabani said, noting that "less then 50 percent of ladies and girls had scarves" and that restaurants were filled with young people dancing.

Iran launched strikes on Iranian opposition groups in Iraqi Kurdistan following the US-Israeli attack in February 2026.

Talabani was asked about a drone strike earlier this week on the Khor Mor gas field in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate.

The field, operated by a UAE company, is one of the largest in Iraq and the strike has left almost 70 percent of Kurdistan without normal power supplies.

Talabani said he asked Iranian officials pointedly if they were behind the attack and he was assured they were not.

"Iran has guaranteed me that it was not by their bidding or doing," he said. "The timing and methodology of the attack needs to be investigated very seriously." 

Iraqi Kurdistan has no air defence systems. The last US troops left Erbil, the region's capital, in September, completing a full US withdrawal from Iraq.

Some US lawmakers have since tried to advance the sale of air defence systems to Iraqi Kurdistan, but Talabani said that the semi-autonomous region was in a "grey area".

"There is a 'one Iraq' policy and the majority of these things need to happen with the OK of Baghdad," he said. "Either provide us with certain systems, or allow us to purchase our own. We are in a grey area."

Talabani spoke at a time when Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region is reeling from a major internal political rift.

Talabani withdrew his PUK, one of the two main political parties in the Kurdistan Regional Government, from the region's parliament this week.

The PUK has traditionally been a rival of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which is led by the region’s president, Nechirvan Barzani.

Talabani called the rift the "single largest political crisis in the history of the Kurdistan region", saying that the region effectively had "two administrations".

The US envoy to Iraq and Syria, Tom Barrack, weighed into the rift, which has raised fears about a splintering of the province at a time of uncertainty over the region's security framework.

"The Barzanis, the Talabanis, have always been great friends of America. This is an Iraqi issue," Barrack said. "My advice is get over it."