By Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj

The Zagros Mountains are often treated as scenery surrounding the politics of Iraq, Iran and Kurdistan. That is a mistake. The Zagros is one of the Middle East's principal geopolitical structures: a vast mountain system stretching roughly 1,500 kilometres across western Iran and into northeastern Iraq, created by the collision of the Arabian and Eurasian plates and extending into the wider frontier zone of Iran, Iraq, Türkiye and the Kurdish lands.

For centuries, the mountains have shaped where armies can move, where states can project authority, where communities can preserve autonomy and where economic resources can be extracted and transported. In the twenty-first century, however, the strategic significance of the Zagros is no longer determined by infantry and mountain passes alone. Missiles, drones, pipelines, border crossings, energy fields, dams, telecommunications infrastructure and political networks have transformed the mountain system into a multidimensional geopolitical frontier.

This makes the Zagros particularly important to understanding the Kurdish question. The Kurdish population is distributed across a mountainous zone divided principally between Türkiye, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The mountains have historically provided protection and social continuity, but they have also fragmented political authority. Today, that same geography simultaneously gives Kurdish actors strategic relevance and exposes them to the security doctrines of the states surrounding them.

The central geopolitical question is therefore not simply who controls the mountains. It is who can convert control of the Zagros' geography, resources and connectivity into durable political agency.

That distinction matters enormously for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

As I argued in “Kurdistan as a Geopolitical Crossroads”, Kurdistan's geographical importance is increasing at precisely the moment when its institutional capacity is under pressure. The Region sits on the western edge of the Zagros system, bordering Iran and Türkiye while remaining constitutionally embedded within Iraq and strategically connected to Syria. It is therefore not simply a Kurdish territory. It is a geopolitical hinge between several competing regional orders.

The Zagros as Iran's Western Strategic Wall

Iran's relationship with the Zagros begins with geography. The mountains form a formidable western barrier between the Iranian plateau and the Mesopotamian lowlands. The political logic is straightforward: whoever governs the approaches through the mountains possesses an important degree of influence over access to Iran's western frontier.

The Zagros does not make Iran invulnerable. But it changes the cost of military penetration. Forces approaching from Mesopotamia must operate across difficult terrain, limited transport corridors and a highly complex topography before reaching the Iranian interior. The mountains therefore have historically functioned as a defensive system as much as a physical landscape.

Modern technology has changed the military equation without eliminating it.

Iran can now use ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, surveillance systems and air power to project force beyond the mountains. Yet the underlying geography continues to matter because military occupation and political control are fundamentally different from long-range strike capability. A drone can cross a mountain range more easily than an army can govern the population living within it.

This distinction became particularly important during the 2026 confrontation between Iran, the United States and Israel. Iranian Kurdish opposition organizations based in Iraqi Kurdistan became part of the wider strategic calculations surrounding Iran's western frontier. Carnegie reported that Iran conducted hundreds of missile and drone strikes against Iranian Kurdish militant groups in Iraqi Kurdistan during the war, while reports also emerged that Kurdish armed groups had been encouraged to consider opening a western front against Tehran.

Iran subsequently claimed that Türkiye and Iraqi Kurdish authorities helped prevent such an offensive. That claim should be treated as an Iranian political narrative rather than independently established fact, but it reveals something strategically important: Tehran views the Iraqi-Iranian Zagros frontier as a potential military theatre in its own right.

The Zagros is therefore simultaneously Iran's shield and vulnerability.

It protects the Iranian plateau from conventional penetration while providing space in which Kurdish political and armed opposition can organize outside Iranian sovereign control. This duality explains much of Tehran's policy toward Iraqi Kurdistan.

The issue is not simply the presence of Iranian Kurdish organizations. It is the possibility that the mountains could become a platform connecting Iranian Kurdish political mobilization, Iraqi Kurdish territory, foreign intelligence activity and wider military competition against Tehran.

That is why the Iranian-Iraqi border cannot be understood merely as a line on a map.

It is a security system.

My analysis, “Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan: Tehran's Regional Strategy and the Struggle Over Iraq's Sovereignty”, examined this broader relationship and argued that Tehran's approach combines diplomacy, economic influence, political relationships, border security and coercive military action. The Zagros provides the physical environment in which those instruments interact.

The Kurdish Question Is Also a Mountain Question

The Kurdish question is often analysed through nationalism, identity, state borders and political movements. Those dimensions are essential, but geography is equally important.

The Kurdish heartland is deeply associated with the Taurus-Zagros mountain system. The mountains created interconnected communities but also separated them into valleys, districts and political zones. This produced a paradox that continues to shape Kurdish politics: geography helped preserve Kurdish identity while simultaneously complicating the construction of unified political authority.

The same mountain system is divided among states that developed different security doctrines toward their Kurdish populations.

Türkiye sees the northern Kurdish mountains primarily through the security lens of the PKK and the broader question of territorial integrity. Iran views its Kurdish frontier through the lens of domestic political opposition, border security and the activities of Iranian Kurdish organizations. Iraq constitutionally recognizes the Kurdistan Region but continues to negotiate the boundaries of federal and regional authority. Syria's Kurdish areas form another part of the wider geographic system.

The Kurdish political map consequently does not correspond to the physical geography of the Kurdish population.

That mismatch is one of the central geopolitical facts of the Middle East.

The Zagros creates connectivity at the level of geography while state borders impose fragmentation at the level of sovereignty.

This helps explain why developments in one part of Kurdistan repeatedly affect another. The changing Kurdish security environment in Türkiye can influence Iraqi Kurdistan. Iranian pressure against Kurdish opposition can affect Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. Developments in Syria can alter Ankara's calculations. Iraqi federal policies can change the economic and political balance of the Kurdish Region.

The Kurdish question therefore operates as a regional security system rather than four separate domestic questions.

That is the central argument of my recent “The Kurdish Question as a Regional Security System”. The Zagros is one of the physical foundations of that system.

The Kurdish Strategic Dilemma

The mountains provide strategic depth, but strategic depth is not the same as strategic agency.

This is perhaps the most important lesson of Zagros geopolitics.

Mountain geography can make a territory difficult to conquer. It cannot automatically make that territory politically powerful.

The Kurdistan Region demonstrates the distinction. Its mountainous geography contributes to its defensive advantages, but its strategic importance comes from the combination of mountains with institutions, borders, energy resources, transportation routes and international relationships.

The Region possesses internationally connected political institutions, an established security structure, significant energy resources and direct access to the Turkish and Iranian markets. It also maintains diplomatic relationships with major international actors.

Yet it remains constitutionally part of Iraq and dependent on Baghdad for important dimensions of its fiscal and political survival.

This creates a structural contradiction.

Kurdistan possesses the geography of a strategic actor without possessing all the sovereign instruments of one.

That is why “From Autonomy to Agency: Kurdistan's Strategic Choice” argues that the Region's future depends on transforming autonomy into institutional and strategic capacity rather than merely defending existing political arrangements.

The Zagros can protect Kurdish territory. It cannot resolve Kurdish political fragmentation.

And that fragmentation is becoming increasingly consequential.

The prolonged KDP-PUK dispute has weakened the ability of the Kurdistan Region to formulate unified policy at exactly the moment when Iran, Türkiye, Baghdad and Washington are recalibrating their regional strategies. My recent analysis of Kurdistan's two-administration crisis argues that institutional paralysis is moving beyond a problem of cabinet formation toward a wider question of whether the Region can maintain coherent political authority.

In Zagros geopolitics, institutional fragmentation becomes a security vulnerability.

External actors can negotiate with different Kurdish parties separately. Security priorities can become geographically divided. Economic relationships can align with different political centres. Border policy can become inconsistent. Energy policy can become fragmented.

The mountain remains one system.

The political authority governing it does not.

Türkiye's Northern Zagros Strategy

Türkiye reads the Zagros differently from Iran.

For Ankara, the mountain system is not principally a defensive wall protecting the Iranian plateau. It is part of a security environment extending from eastern Türkiye through northern Iraq and into the wider Kurdish region.

The primary concern has historically been the PKK and the possibility that Iraqi Kurdish territory could provide strategic depth to Kurdish armed organizations operating against Türkiye.

But Türkiye's strategy has increasingly become more complicated than military containment.

Trade, energy, infrastructure and transportation now matter almost as much as military operations.

The Kurdistan Region's geography connects Türkiye with Iraqi markets and energy resources. The Ibrahim Khalil border crossing connects northern Iraq to the Turkish economy, while the Iraq-Türkiye oil infrastructure has historically provided an outlet for Kurdish and Iraqi crude toward the Mediterranean.

The significance of this relationship became clear during the prolonged dispute over northern Iraqi oil exports. As I argued in “The Pipeline Cliff”, the Iraq-Türkiye pipeline is not simply an energy infrastructure project. It is a mechanism through which Baghdad, Erbil and Ankara exercise leverage over one another.

The underlying lesson is broader.

The Zagros foothills are where security geography becomes economic geography.

The mountains contain the passes, but the foothills contain many of the infrastructure assets that convert geography into political power.

That includes roads, pipelines, energy fields, border crossings and cities.

Türkiye therefore has an interest in keeping the Iraqi side of the Zagros economically integrated with Türkiye while preventing the same territory from becoming a secure military environment for organizations Ankara considers hostile.

This creates a fundamental tension in Turkish policy: Ankara wants the region open economically but controlled militarily.

The Kurdistan Region must navigate that contradiction carefully.

The Foothills: Where Mountain Geopolitics Becomes Energy Geopolitics

The Zagros is also one of the world's most important energy landscapes.

The geological significance is extraordinary. The US Geological Survey's 2025 assessment of the Zagros Fold Belt across Iran, Iraq, Syria and Türkiye estimated mean undiscovered technically recoverable conventional resources of approximately 3.3 billion barrels of oil and 80.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

These are not simply geological statistics.

They explain why the Zagros has become inseparable from Middle Eastern energy politics.

The collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates created the fold structures and geological conditions that helped produce and trap hydrocarbons across the region. The mountains themselves are therefore connected to an enormous energy system extending from Iran through Iraq toward Türkiye and the wider Middle East.

This creates an important geographical paradox.

The highest mountains are usually associated with security.

The lower foothills and adjoining basins are associated with energy.

The result is a strategic belt in which military geography and economic geography overlap.

Kirkuk illustrates this relationship. So do the oil fields of the Kurdistan Region. So does the Khor Mor gas field. So do the pipelines connecting northern Iraq to Türkiye.

My analysis of Kurdistan's energy security argued that energy security in Kurdistan cannot be separated from political authority, because the Region's energy infrastructure generates both economic leverage and strategic vulnerability.

The same principle applies at the Zagros level.

Energy infrastructure creates influence only if it can be protected, financed, transported and marketed.

That means pipelines are geopolitical instruments.

The Iraq-Türkiye pipeline is therefore not simply a commercial route. Kirkuk is not simply an oil field. Khor Mor is not simply a gas project. Border crossings are not simply customs facilities.

They are instruments of strategic power.

Recent attacks against energy infrastructure across the wider region have demonstrated how quickly energy routes can become military targets. The current vulnerability of Gulf routes has also increased interest in alternative overland corridors, including routes through Iraq and Türkiye. Reuters recently reported renewed discussion of routes that could reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz while also emphasizing the security and political risks facing those alternatives.

This raises the strategic value of northern Iraq.

If the Middle East increasingly seeks energy routes that reduce dependence on maritime chokepoints, the northern Zagros corridor becomes more valuable.

But increased value also attracts increased competition.

Water: The Underestimated Zagros Weapon

Energy is only half of the resource equation.

Water may eventually become even more consequential.

The Zagros is a major hydrological system. Snow and rainfall in the mountains feed rivers flowing toward both the Iranian interior and the Mesopotamian plains. The Tigris tributary system is closely connected to the highlands, while Iran's western and southwestern river systems are similarly influenced by mountain hydrology.

This gives altitude political meaning.

A dam constructed in the mountains is not merely infrastructure. It can affect agricultural production, electricity generation, urban supply and downstream political relationships.

Water therefore follows the same geopolitical logic as energy: whoever controls infrastructure at higher elevations can affect populations downstream.

This does not mean that the Zagros should be reduced to a simplistic "water weapon" theory. Water politics is more complicated than that. Rainfall, climate change, dam management, agricultural demand and institutional coordination all matter.

But the basic strategic reality is clear: the mountain system connects upstream political decisions with downstream economic consequences.

For Iraq, this is particularly important because much of the country's population and agricultural activity lies downstream from major river systems.

For the Kurdistan Region, water is also increasingly connected to energy, agriculture, tourism and internal development.

The Zagros therefore produces a second form of strategic depth: hydrological depth.

Iran, Türkiye and Iraq Are Competing Over the Same Geography

The most important feature of Zagros geopolitics is that Iran, Türkiye and Iraq are not competing over completely separate spaces.

They are interacting within the same geographic system.

Iran wants its western frontier secured.

Türkiye wants its southern frontier secured.

Iraq wants sovereignty over its territory.

Kurdish actors want political and economic space.

The United States wants to prevent the region from becoming dominated by hostile forces while reducing its direct military footprint.

Energy companies want stable investment conditions.

Transport planners want corridors.

Local populations want economic security and protection from conflict.

These objectives overlap but do not naturally produce a stable equilibrium.

This is why the Zagros should be understood as a four-dimensional frontier: security, sovereignty, resources and identity.

Iran's concern is security.

Iraq's concern is sovereignty.

Türkiye's concern is security and connectivity.

Kurdish actors' concern is political agency.

Energy companies' concern is predictability.

The resulting competition is not necessarily heading toward a single military confrontation. More often, it produces persistent low-intensity competition: border pressure, drone strikes, political bargaining, infrastructure disputes, intelligence operations, economic leverage and competing alliances.

My analysis, “Kurdish-Iranian Dynamics: Why Europe Should Treat Iran's Kurdish Frontier as a Regional Security Issue”, examined how Iranian pressure against Kurdish actors has increasingly become a wider Iraqi and regional security problem.

The significance of the Zagros is that all of these dynamics occur in a relatively concentrated geographic space.

Why 2026 Has Changed the Strategic Equation

The Zagros is becoming more important because the wider regional order is changing.

Iran has faced direct military pressure from the United States and Israel. Iranian Kurdish organizations have consequently become more prominent in discussions about Iran's western vulnerability. Carnegie reported that Iranian Kurdish groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan were struck repeatedly during the 2026 war.

At the same time, Türkiye's Kurdish conflict is undergoing a potentially historic transformation, changing the strategic environment on the northern side of the Kurdish mountain belt. My analysis, “As Turkey Ends One Kurdish War, Iran Opens Another Front”, argued that the possible decline of the PKK conflict does not remove the Kurdish security question; instead, it may shift its geopolitical centre of gravity toward Iran.

The United States is also reducing its direct military footprint in Iraq. Current reporting indicates that the planned September 30, 2026 end of the U.S.-led military mission is creating new uncertainty for Iraqi and Kurdish security calculations, including concerns over air-defense gaps and the future relationship between Baghdad, Washington and the Kurdistan Region.

This matters enormously for Zagros geopolitics.

For decades, the Kurdistan Region operated within a security environment in which American military and diplomatic presence provided an additional layer of deterrence.

That environment is changing.

Kurdistan can no longer assume that strategic importance automatically translates into strategic protection.

This is precisely the distinction between geography and agency.

The KDP-PUK Question Is Also a Zagros Question

The internal Kurdish political divide is frequently discussed as a party dispute.

It is more than that.

The KDP-PUK division has a geographic dimension that overlaps with the broader strategic geography of the Zagros.

The KDP's political and economic relationships are particularly strong toward Türkiye and the northern and western parts of the Region. The PUK's principal political centre is Sulaymaniyah, with its own historical relationship with Iran and different external networks.

This does not mean that the KDP is simply "pro-Türkiye" or the PUK simply "pro-Iran." Kurdish politics is considerably more complicated than that. But external actors clearly understand that internal Kurdish geography creates different political access points.

The danger is that external competition can reinforce internal fragmentation.

A divided Kurdish political system provides neighbouring powers with multiple channels through which to influence policy.

A unified Kurdish political system would have greater bargaining power with all of them.

This is why my recent analysis, “Kurdistan's Two-Administration Crisis”, should be understood as a geopolitical analysis rather than merely an institutional one. Political paralysis weakens the Region's ability to translate its geography into coherent strategy.

The mountains cannot speak with one voice if the political institutions governing them cannot.

From Mountain Sanctuary to Strategic Agency

The historical Kurdish relationship with the mountains was based heavily on sanctuary.

The mountains provided protection from state armies and allowed political and armed movements to survive.

But sanctuary is not enough for a modern political actor.

Strategic agency requires institutions.

It requires unified decision-making, credible security forces, economic diversification, functioning diplomacy and the ability to manage relations with neighbouring states simultaneously.

That is why the strategic future of Kurdistan cannot simply be defined by the question of autonomy.

The more important question is whether autonomy can be converted into agency.

Agency would mean that the Kurdistan Region can negotiate with Baghdad without being isolated from Türkiye, maintain relations with Iran without becoming an Iranian security dependency, cooperate with Washington without becoming a platform for confrontation with Tehran, and participate in regional energy networks without allowing any single external actor to control its economic lifelines.

That is a difficult balance.

But geography makes it possible.

The Kurdistan Region's location is not simply a vulnerability. It is also its greatest potential source of leverage.

The Region sits between major markets, energy systems, security environments and transport corridors.

My earlier analysis, “Kurdistan in the New Middle Eastern Geopolitics”, argued that the Region's future will depend on whether it can convert geography, energy, security and connectivity into durable strategic influence.

That is precisely the challenge posed by the Zagros.

The Zagros Is Not a Kurdish State

There is, however, an important warning.

It would be a mistake to romanticize mountain geography.

The Zagros does not automatically produce Kurdish unity. It does not automatically produce independence. It does not automatically protect civilians. It does not automatically generate economic prosperity.

The mountains can produce fragmentation as easily as they produce sanctuary.

They can isolate communities.

They can make infrastructure expensive.

They can complicate centralized governance.

They can facilitate armed conflict.

They can become militarized borderlands.

Recent academic research on mountain geopolitics in Iraqi Kurdistan has emphasized precisely this complexity. Research published in 2026 shows that even apparently ordinary activities such as tourism are shaped by overlapping sovereignties, checkpoints, internal borders and competing authorities across the Zagros.

This is an important reminder.

Geopolitics does not exist only at the level of presidents, armies and pipelines.

It also exists at checkpoints, roads, villages and mountain trails.

Sovereignty is experienced geographically.

What Strategic Agency Would Mean

For the Kurdistan Region, strategic agency in the Zagros would therefore require several transformations.

First, the Region would need stronger institutional unity. External actors should not be able to approach Kurdish security, energy and foreign relations through competing political centres.

Second, Kurdistan would need to diversify its economic connectivity. Dependence on one pipeline, one border crossing, one neighbouring state or one external security partner creates vulnerability.

Third, energy should be treated as a strategic instrument rather than merely a source of government revenue. The Region's oil and gas resources can provide bargaining power with Baghdad, Türkiye and international markets only when contracts, infrastructure and institutions are sufficiently resilient.

My analysis, “Kurdistan's Energy Crisis Is Exploding”, examined how energy disruptions are increasingly exposing the structural weaknesses of Kurdistan's economic model.

Fourth, border security must become more institutionalized.

The Kurdistan Region cannot prevent every regional conflict from reaching its territory. But it can strengthen the argument that Iraqi territory should not be used as a platform for attacks against neighbours.

That means the Kurdish interest in neutrality is not passive.

It is an active security doctrine.

My analysis, “Why Iran's Hidden War in Kurdistan Keeps Striking Iraq”, showed why the presence of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups makes complete insulation from Tehran's security calculations extremely difficult.

Kurdistan therefore needs neutrality backed by institutions, not neutrality based solely on political declarations.

The Future of the Zagros

The strategic importance of the Zagros is likely to increase rather than decline.

Climate pressures will increase the value of water.

Energy diversification will increase the value of pipelines and northern export routes.

The transformation of regional security will increase the value of border control.

The changing U.S. military presence will increase the importance of local security institutions.

The evolving Turkish-Kurdish relationship will reshape the northern part of the Kurdish mountain system.

Iran's confrontation with external powers will keep its western frontier highly sensitive.

And the growing competition over alternative energy and trade corridors will make Iraq and Türkiye more important to the regional order.

The Zagros will consequently remain a frontier where geography becomes strategy.

Iran will continue to view the mountains as a defensive shield and a potential source of insecurity.

Türkiye will continue to seek security and economic connectivity across northern Iraq.

Baghdad will seek to reinforce sovereignty over territory that has historically been difficult to govern from the centre.

Kurdish actors will continue to seek political space within a geography divided by international borders.

The strategic question is whether those competing objectives can be managed through institutions or whether the mountains will remain a permanent theatre of coercion.

For Kurdistan, the answer will depend less on the height of its mountains than on the strength of its institutions.

The Zagros gave the Kurds strategic depth.

It gave them sanctuary.

It preserved communities through centuries of political transformation.

It created a distinctive geopolitical space between the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia.

But geography alone cannot produce political power.

The next phase of the Kurdish struggle will therefore not simply be about controlling territory in the mountains. It will be about transforming the strategic value of the mountains into institutional capacity, economic leverage, diplomatic flexibility and credible security.

That is the difference between living in a geopolitical crossroads and becoming a geopolitical actor.

The Zagros is not scenery around the Kurdish question.

It is one of the places where the Kurdish question is made.

And as Iran, Iraq and Türkiye compete over security, energy, borders and regional corridors, the mountains are becoming not less important, but more valuable.

The decisive question is no longer whether geography matters.

It is who will have the institutional capacity to turn Zagros geography into strategic agency?

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