Abrahamian describes the revolt as a Marxist insurgency with the aim of establishing autonomy for Kurds in Iran, modeled as a federal republic.

The 1967 revolt, coordinated into a semi-organized campaign in the Mahabad-Urumiya region by the revived KDPI party, was entirely subdued by the central Iranian government.

[4] The absence of a local Kurdish armed force in Iran, and of a large urban population ready to be mobilized against the central government, left Iranian Kurds waiting for an external shock to provide an opportunity, much as the Second World War had.

[6] From March 1970, a new "Provisional Central Committee" began to prepare a new part program, approved at the third KDPI party conference in Baghdad in June 1971.

The game changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which failed to provide the Kurdish demands for autonomy, but on the contrary faced those with an even harsher bitterness than the previous monarch regime.

KDPI has retained a low level political activity in exile through the late 1990s and early 2000s, signing a cooperation agreement with Komala in 2012.