Kurdish independence vote angers U.S.

IRBIL, Iraq — As jubilant Iraqi Kurds celebrated their vote Monday on independence from Iraq, shooting off fireworks and parading in cars festooned with Kurdish flags late into the night, their neighbors conducted military exercises on the region’s borders, raising the threat of military intervention if it secedes.

The vote played out on a historic day for several million Kurds in northern Iraq, and was a pivotal moment in the Kurdish dream of a politically independent state.

While officials said the vote would not be tabulated until at least Tuesday, it was expected to be overwhelmingly in favor of independence for Iraqi Kurdistan, the semiautonomous region in northern Iraq.

Despite the celebrations, the vote may come at a steep political cost to the Kurds. It proved highly provocative for Turkey, Iran and Iraq, whose responses are likely to roil the region in the coming days, stirring the very turmoil that the United States hoped to avoid when it pressured the Kurds to call off the vote.

The White House has warned that a Kurdish move toward independence could set off ethnic conflict, and undermine the U.S.led coalition against the Islamic State. “We hope for a unified Iraq to annihilate ISIS, and certainly a unified Iraq to push back on Iran,” the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Monday.