Within the mountains of northern Iraq, simply 30 miles from the Iranian border, CBS Information met Thursday morning with fighters — a lot of them ladies — from an armed Kurdish Iranian opposition group who say they’re poised to tackle and assist topple the Islamic Republic’s hardline clerical rulers.
The Democratic Celebration of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) is banned as a terror group inside Iran and based mostly in exile throughout the border in Iraq. For years it has educated for the day the Iranian regime will be ousted from energy. However as President Trump seems to step again from threats of a U.S. navy intervention on behalf of Iran’s protesters, the Kurdish group’s chief advised CBS Information that point has not but come.
President Trump said Wednesday that he’d heard on “good authority” that the “killing in Iran is stopping” and that there was “no plan for executions” within the nation following a brutal crackdown to finish two weeks of widespread protests. Sources inside Iran have advised CBS Information the Iranian authorities’ crackdown may have killed upwards of 12,000 people, and probably many extra.
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His remarks appeared to sign a step again from repeated warnings of an unspecified U.S. intervention to guard protesters, after which a menace on Tuesday to order “very strong actions” if Iran hanged protesters.
That won’t have been the sign from Washington that the PDKI forces coaching throughout the border in Iraq had been hoping for.
Commander Sayran Gargoli advised CBS Information the protests had given them hope that the oppressive regime that got here to energy with the 1979 Islamic Revolution would possibly lastly be toppled, however solely “if the people who find themselves demonstrating on the road get worldwide assist.”
PDKI chief Mustafa Hijri has lived in exile for greater than 4 many years, and he is watched as Iran’s rulers quash a number of rounds of main unrest. As the newest protests appear to undergo the identical destiny, he stated he could not say for positive whether or not this rebellion would possibly show pivotal.
“It will depend on if the widespread killing will proceed or not. If it continues, for positive the demonstrators will be unable to proceed. Alternatively, there are different doable eventualities, like America will get into negotiations with the regime of mullahs and forces them to just accept its situations. On this case, the regime will handle to increase its existence for a while.”
CBS Information/Rob Taylor 
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