Oct 8, 2014

The advancement of the Islamic State group (IS) militants on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani near the Syria-Turkey border has alarmed many Iranian citizens, resulting in protests and even an op-ed by an Iranian news site asking the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, to take action.

Protests broke out in several Kurdish cities in western Iran, as well as other cities across country including Tabriz, Mashhad and Tehran itself in front of the Turkish Embassy to express their support for Kobani. Human rights and dissident activists were also in attendance at some of the protests. Iranian Kurdish musicians Shahram Nazeri and Sedigh Tarif have also gone on hunger strike to bring attention to the plight of Kurds in Kobani.

As Kurdish fighters currently engaged in the battle await more air strikes by the United States against IS positions or assistance from Turkey in opening the border to reinforcements, a complicated relationship between Turkey, Kurdish groups in Turkey and Syria and the anti-IS coalition seems to be delaying the more serious action that was seen when IS advanced toward Kurds in Iraq in the summer.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Marzieh Afkham warned yesterday, Oct. 7 of a humanitarian catastrophe in Kobani. She said, “Iran will soon send humanitarian aid for the residents and refugees in this area through the Syrian government.”

It is not clear how this arrangement would work. Iran has been one of the strongest supporters of the Syrian government, which retreated from Syrian Kurdish towns when the civil war began to stretch the resources of the army. And Kobani, which is called Ayn al-Arab in Arabic and situated in the middle of three separate Kurdish-ruled cantons in northern Syria, is completely surrounded by IS fighters on the Syrian side of the border and Turkish troops on the Turkish side.