President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back on Saturday against reports that they were working with Kurdish leaders to launch a ground invasion of Iran.

“We’re not looking for the Kurds going in,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday night. “We’re very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is. … I don’t want to see the Kurds going in and getting killed.”

Trump’s remarks came in response to reporters asking the president about his phone calls with Kurdish leaders at the outset of the campaign against Iran, and a subsequent report that U.S. and Israeli officials said Kurdish Iranian factions are preparing for combat against the Iranian regime. 

Many Kurdish factions have long sought an independent Kurdistan, and some of Iran’s neighbors, such as Turkey and Iraq, have historically been concerned about Kurdish separatist factions.

In an apparent reference to such concerns, Netanyahu said in a broader video statement about the war in Iran that Israel and the U.S. “do not seek to divide Iran. We seek to liberate Iran and live in peace with it.”

Netanyahu encouraged the people of Iran to once again rise up against their leaders: “At the end of the day, liberation from the yoke of tyranny, this liberation will depend on you, the brave and long-suffering Iranian people.”

In his first public statement about the war, last Saturday night, Netanyahu called for unity among Iran’s ethnic groups against the Islamic Republic: “The time has come for you to unite for a historic mission. Citizens of Iran: Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Abkhazians and Baluchis. This is your time to join forces, topple the regime and secure your future.”

Hejar Berenji, a Kurdish analyst and commentator, told Jewish Insider: “If you are serious about a free and democratic Iran, the door runs through Kurdistan.” 

Berenji called on the U.S. to “protect Iraqi Kurdistan and support Iranian Kurds, because they are in a unique position to become the catalyst for broader change across Iran.” 

In addition, he said, “it is time for U.S. leadership to [issue] an open call for an uprising to all Iranians.”

Berenji said that “talk about separation is mostly a distraction — something the Islamic Republic has long used, along with some like-minded voices outside Iran, to scare people away from the one force that is already organized, ready and deeply rooted inside the country.”

“This is not about dividing Iran. It is about recognizing where the real capacity, the real will and the real opportunity for democratic change already exist,” he stated.

Harold Rhode, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and former longtime advisor on the Islamic world in the U.S. Department of Defense, told JI that Kurds “on the one hand, want an independent homeland, but on the other hand, the Kurds in Iran feel very Iranian.”

Invoking a phrase used by Iranian Kurds that loosely means that they are rooted in Iran’s land and culture, Rhode said, “That is the best solution for the Kurds and everybody. [The phrase] evokes something deep in the soul of Iranians.” 

With Iran’s many ethnic minorities, “Iranian” is “a political identity and not an ethnic identity,” Rhode said.

Rhode added that one of his contacts among Iranian Kurdish leaders based in Iraq already told him before Trump’s statement that their troops would not be entering Iran.

As to whether Kurdish leadership may be disappointed by Trump’s decision, Rhodes said, “The Kurds are like the Jews. They’re constantly worried that people are going … to say all sorts of positive things and then abandon them. … That’s what really has happened.”