Iran is emerging stronger from war, Iraqi Kurdish leader says

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Iran is emerging stronger from war, Iraqi Kurdish leader says Submitted by Sean Mathews on Thu, 11/12/2026 - 09:19 Bafel Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also…

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.

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.

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