ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Friday that Tehran ignores comments by US President Donald Trump positing Kurds as a prospective ally against the Iranian government, describing them as a “sign of desperation” and highlighting the participation of Iranian Kurds in the state's armed forces.

The US president on multiple occasions spoke of his hopes that Iranian Kurds would rise up against the Islamic Republic during the the recent US-Israeli military offensive, before backtracking and asserting that "we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is" in March.

When asked about his opinion on the remarks made by Trump, Baghaei said, “We never cared about what foreigners said about our compatriots; we ourselves know how they love their country,” Iranian state media quoted him as saying during visit to western Iran’s Kurdistan Province. 

“These words that you hear are a sign of desperation and a sign that the enemy will resort to all kinds of conspiracies to achieve its own illegitimate goals and ambitions,” he added. 

Baghaei noted Kurds “should be congratulated for striking at the enemy and defeating him.”

Trump recently said he was “very disappointed” that weapons sent by Washington to unnamed Kurdish groups intended to be distributed to Iranian protesters were allegedly being retained, with Kurdish political and armed groups having vehemently denied receiving any weaponry.

Speaking to reporters, Trump stated that Washington had intended for the Kurds to deliver weapons to Iranian protesters during the nationwide January protests “but the Kurds disappointed us, the Kurds take, take, take.”

Trump’s words have also been widely criticized for their lack of specificity regarding the particular Kurdish group that had allegedly received the weapons, which has led to internal strife among the Kurdish political and armed forces.

Kurdish armed groups were previously accused in early March of launching ground incursions into Iran from the country’s western border to join the conflict against Tehran, reports they strongly denied.

Bases belonging to the Kurdish opposition armed groups in the Kurdistan Region have been continuously targeted by Tehran since the initiation of the US-Israeli war on Iran, leading to a number of casualties and persisting despite the existence of a ceasefire.

Late senior Iranian security official Ali Larijani said in March that Iran views US claims about Kurdish groups as part of broader hostility toward Tehran, adding that past US treatment of Kurds showed they “did not fall into the trap.”