Explosions in Middle East cause Iran and US to launch trade strike
The United States continues to bomb targets inside Iran, while Iran attacks countries in the region, including a drone attack on an airport in Azerbaijan.
As the United States and Israel continue to attack Iran with bombs and missiles, recent reports suggest that Iranian Kurdish militias on the Iran-Iraqi border may be preparing attacks on Iranian security forces in hopes of supporting a popular uprising that President Donald Trump has expressed hope for.
The Trump administration has denied direct involvement in such an effort, but the president told Reuters that such a scenario would be “great” and that he was “totally in favor of it.”
The situation highlights the role Iran’s ethnic dynamics may play in shaping the country’s future as the war progresses, although some believe ethnic conflict could be disastrous. Since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, more than 1,000 people have been killed, including six US military personnel.
Iran has long been a multi-ethnic, pluralistic society made up of Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, and other groups. The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who was killed in the February 28 attack, is Azerbaijani, and Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian is half Azerbaijani and half Kurdish.
As a result, stoking ethnic divisions could prove to be a dangerous tactic, said Alex Shams, editor-in-chief of Ajam Media Collective, a platform dedicated to Iranian culture, society and politics.
“The idea that Iran is ruled by Persians is not accurate,” Shams said. “Different ethnic groups are all part of the political equation. The idea that ethnic groups can be separated and turned against each other is not only dangerous, but I don’t think it will succeed.”
Nevertheless, some ethnic groups in Iran may be looking to gain greater global recognition as the situation progresses, said Brenda Shafer, a lecturer at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and author of “Iran is More than Persia: Iran’s Ethnic Politics.”
“Just as the Soviet Union collapsed and people who were talking about Russians discovered Latvians and Georgians, we’re seeing a similar situation in Iran,” Schafer said.
What are the main ethnic groups in Iran?
Iran is a self-proclaimed Islamic republic whose state religion is Shia Islam. Persians make up about half of Iran’s 85 million people, but several large ethnic groups also live within Iran and mostly along its borders.
Iran’s minority groups have often advocated for more equal treatment and recognition, Shafer said. For example, the right to speak and teach one’s native language in a country dominated by Persian culture.
The largest ethnic group is the Azerbaijanis, who make up about one-quarter to one-third of Iran. Kurds make up about 10% of the population, with Arabs and Balochs forming notable forces as well.
Schafer said most of Iran’s ethnic minorities live in provinces bordering neighboring countries, with Arabs living near Iraq, Kurds near Iraq and Turkey, Azerbaijanis near Azerbaijan, and Baloch near Pakistan.
But unlike other groups, the Kurds “have separatist tendencies” that can sometimes put them in sharp conflict with the clergy, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank.
What kind of people are Kurds?
According to the CIA’s World Factbook, Kurds are an ethnic minority in West Asia with a population of 30 to 45 million people. Kurds are the indigenous people of Kurdistan, a geographical region that includes southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria.
According to author Ofra Bengio’s book “The Awakening of the Kurds: Nation Building in a Collapsed Homeland,” the Kurds are the world’s largest group without a state. This situation has been a source of increasing political tension for many years as a result of French and British land distribution after World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Some Kurdish groups have been fighting for autonomy in eastern Turkey for decades, while a Kurdish militia called the YPG forms the bulk of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighting ISIS in Syria.
An armed uprising by Iranian Kurds could seriously damage Iran’s stability, and could fuel a separatist movement among Iran’s Baloch ethnic minority, which has ties to separatists in Baluchistan province, which borders Pakistan. Islamabad is unlikely to tolerate any move toward Baloch independence.
The government is ‘in a precarious situation’
Iran responded to the Feb. 28 attack by violently attacking U.S. military bases and other targets across the region, including friendly countries. Azerbaijan announced Thursday it would retaliate after an Iranian drone injured four people in the country.
“Two weeks ago, Turkey and Azerbaijan were genuinely concerned about the stability of Iran and did not want the regime to collapse,” Schaefer said. “But they are becoming impatient with Iran after it attacked all the countries it is friends with. There is a growing realization that the regime is collapsing.”
Schafer said ethnic resistance movements continue, with Baloch, Kurdish and Arab ethnic groups carrying out regular attacks.
“Something is blown up almost every week in Baloch areas,” she says. “The government is in a precarious situation. I think this is all going to come to a head as the centrists lose more and more power.”
Schaefer said this is especially true in sparsely populated border areas with large concentrations of ethnic minorities. That’s because state officials there don’t have the anonymity of the walled facilities enjoyed by government officials in Tehran.
“In rural areas, people know where they live and where their children go to school,” she said.
Schafer said this moment is similar to November 1991, the month before the Soviet Union collapsed.
“These geopolitical earthquakes are hard to imagine, but they are possible,” she says. “It is unlikely that the people of these provinces would agree to be placed under new rule from Tehran.”
Ethnic conflict is a recipe for death
However, relying on ethnic conflict as a strategy is unwise and could be detrimental to Iran’s future, Shams said.
“All ethnic groups in Iran have participated in the struggle for freedom,” Shams said. “Kurdish Iranians were a central figure in the 2022 Women’s Life Freedom protests. The idea that Kurdish Iranians are not part of Iran or that they could be hostile to Iran is not only naive and wrong, it is dangerous.”
That is not to say that discrimination does not exist in Iran or that groups are not fighting for greater rights, but weaponizing such grievances is “a path to death and destruction,” he said.
“There is reason to fear and oppose the United States, which is trying to cause ethnic division,” Shams said. “Iranians were busy fighting for their freedom before the US attack. Now instead of continuing the fight for freedom, they are running away from bombs.”
Reporting by Reuters and USA Today reporter Kim Hjelmgaard.
