Iranian ethnic minorities exiled abroad are warning that efforts to overthrow the country’s theocratic Islamic regime will falter without swift international support, particularly from the United States.

“We need help. The uprising and our people’s resistance cannot continue without comprehensive and sustained support,” Khalil Kani Sanani, the spokesman for the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, told the Jerusalem Post Thursday. PAK is a Kurdish Peshmerga group operating in the mountainous regions of Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan.