Iran's Ethnic Tinderbox

John R. Bradley

Iran’s Ethnic Tinderbox

Institute of Technology

The Washington Quarterly

• 30:1 pp. 181–190.

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John R. Bradley is a Cairo-based columnist on Middle East issues for

The Straits Times

and au-

thor of

Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis

(2005). He spent three weeks in Iran

in early 2006 and was granted unrestricted access to the Arab-majority, oil-rich Khuzestan

region bordering Iraq.

nly roughly one-half of Iran’s 70 million people are ethnic Per-

sians, the rest being Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Baluchis, and
Lors. In the eyes of many observers, this unusual diversity makes Iran not so
much a nation-state as a multinational empire dominated by Persians, much
as the Soviet Union once was dominated by Russians. Iran’s ethnic minori-
ties share a widespread sense of discrimination and deprivation toward the
central Tehran government. Tehran’s highly centralized development strat-
egy has resulted in a wide socioeconomic gap between the center and the pe-
ripheries, where there is also an uneven distribution of power, socioeconomic
resources, and sociocultural status. Fueled by these long-standing economic
and cultural grievances against Tehran, unrest among the country’s large
groups of ethnic minorities is increasing.

As of late, they have been empowered by Tehran’s international isolation

and inspired by the gains of their ethnic brothers in neighboring states, such
as the Kurds and Turkmen now playing key roles in the new Iraqi govern-
ment, to make louder demands for their own rights.

Meanwhile, sensing that

their moment might have come, diaspora opposition groups led by Iranian
exiles have started campaigning together to garner greater international sup-
port. A Washington conference in early 2006, for instance, brought together
representatives of Kurdish, Baluchi, Ahvazi, Turkmen, and Azeri organiza-
tions that aim to form a strong common front against the Islamic regime.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made an election pledge that he
and his ministerial team would visit all of Iran’s 30 provinces within their

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first year in office to settle long-standing local problems, many of them relat-
ed to ethnicity or religion. As of his first anniversary as president, however,
he had visited only about half of them, and a number had effectively become
off-limits for him because of escalating ethnic and sectarian tensions. Indeed,
Iran has recently been experiencing some of the worst ethnic violence in its
modern history.

The Iranian clerical regime does not publicly deny the hazards of the

country’s multiethnic nature. Official public statements from senior regime
figures, however, typically blame “outside interference” for violence in the

state. The day after the government closed
the state-run

Iran

newspaper for publish-

ing a riot-inducing cartoon likening Azeris
to cockroaches,

Ahmadinejad accused the

United States and its allies of hatching plots
to provoke ethnic tensions that would desta-
bilize his country. “The United States and its
allies should know that they will not be able
to provoke divisions and differences, through
desperate attempts, among the dear Irani-
an nation,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech

broadcast live on state-run television.

Similarly, the United Kingdom, wide-

ly reviled by the Iranian government and public alike as a perpetual meddler
in internal Iranian affairs, is repeatedly blamed for violence in Khuzestan,
which is populated by Iranian Arabs who have close historical as well as
tribal ties to Iraqi Arabs across the border.

Behind the scenes, however, the Iranian government is more soberly dis-

cussing the root causes of Iranian ethnic disturbances. The Islamic Majlis
Center for Research, an Iranian government think tank, warned in a 2005
report that the country will face even more serious internal unrest unless
the government better addresses the needs of its ethnic minorities and cited
two key challenges facing the regime in this regard. First, unemployment
among young people across all ethnicities and regions can fan the flames of
resentment toward Tehran.

The report also cited poverty among border-

area non-Persian ethnic groups, who are historically vulnerable to outside
manipulation. Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, and Baluchis share ties with
people in neighboring Azerbaijan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan, respectively, all of which are either traditionally hostile to Iran’s
ruling clerics or which contain U.S. and other Western troops. Does this
internal unrest threaten the Iranian government’s control of its land and
population? Further, with the West’s desire for a more moderate regime in
mind, can and should it use these developments to its advantage?

ran has recently

experienced some
of the worst ethnic
violence in its modern
history.

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Pipelines at Stake in Khuzestan

The southwestern Khuzestan province, with its huge resources of oil, gas,
and water, is the nerve center of Iran’s economy. Its vast, arid plains are
punctuated by the flaring of gas fires at dozens of oil drilling rigs, which
provide Tehran with about 80 percent of its crude oil production revenue.
Unrest among ethnic Arabs in Khuzestan, which borders southern Iraq and
is home to many of Iran’s two million Arabs, presents Tehran with an espe-
cially serious domestic security threat.

Despite its vast natural resources, the province currently ranks among

Iran’s poorest and least developed. Relentlessly bombed by Iraq during the
Iran-Iraq War during 1980–1988, the main cities of Khuzestan were decimat-
ed. The capital, Ahvaz, lacks a decent hotel, and visitors to the city center
are greeted with the stench of an open sewer near the main hospital. Drug
addiction is a major problem. In the evenings, the riverbank is dotted with
groups of addicts who discuss their progress toward rehabilitation under the
supervision of social workers.

Provincial and Ethnographic Map of Iran

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Before the war, however, the province was among Iran’s most developed.

When Iraq invaded in 1980, hoping to take advantage of the postrevolution
chaos to seize the oil fields, then-President Saddam Hussein portrayed him-
self as the liberator of the Khuzestan Arabs. Although many Iranian Arabs
in border towns openly backed Iraq, the majority elsewhere did not, perhaps
because they were mostly Shi‘ite Muslims whose fellow Shi‘ites in Iraq were
persecuted under Saddam’s rule. Local ethnic Arabs complain that, as a re-
sult of their divided loyalties during the Iran-Iraq War, they are now viewed

more than ever by the clerical regime in Teh-
ran as a potential fifth column and suffer un-
der an official policy of discrimination. In an
impoverished Arab village about three miles
from Ahvaz, oil pipelines that run among
homes carry oil from the nearby drilling rigs
to reﬁneries near the Persian Gulf. “We don’t
have any freedom here,” says one local young
man, who works as an engineer at a drilling
rig. “We are standing on all of the country’s
wealth, and yet we get no benefit from it.”

The men said that Farsi is the only language taught in their village school,

although all the students are Arab, and that no Arabic-language newspapers
are allowed to be published in the province. They said they also suffer much
higher levels of unemployment and poverty than Persians. “The government
says we are traitors,” added another man. Like most members of his family, he
said, he is unemployed. “We are Iranians. It is the government in Tehran that
is treacherous because it refuses us equal rights.”

There was no evidence

of the anti-Western sentiment held by their tribal cousins across the border
in Iraq, and there was a general excitement among those to whom I talked
at the stories of a greater Western interest in their plight. One man openly
stated that he would welcome British forces as liberators, should they invade
from Iraq. At the same time, all were deeply critical of the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq itself. “What use is democracy and freedom if there is no security?”
was one typical comment.

About 50 Arabs have been implicated by the government in a series of

bombings that killed 21 people after antigovernment riots broke out in April
2005. At least 20 were reported killed, and hundreds were injured in the
riots themselves. Amnesty International reports security forces summarily
executed many of those arrested. Tehran dismissed the charge as false.

The

scale of the riots probably would have escaped foreign attention if the Qatar-
based, Arabic-language Al Jazeera television news channel had not managed
to get a video crew into Khuzestan. Al Jazeera was subsequently barred from
reporting from the province.

The rioters were infuriated by a leaked letter

ehind the scenes,

Tehran is soberly
discussing the root
causes of ethnic
disturbances.

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attributed to former Iranian vice president Muhammad Ali Abtahi, which he
denounced as a forgery, that disclosed plans to expel Arabs from the prov-
ince and replace them with ethnic Persians. Ahmadinejad himself has been
forced to cancel three trips to Ahvaz at the last minute. The official rea-
son given each time was bad weather, but the real cause was likely security
threats. One of the worst bombings, in which eight were killed, took place
just hours before the president was to address a public rally.

Two ethnic Arab men found guilty of bombing a bank in January 2006, kill-

ing six people, were publicly hanged from a crane in Ahvaz in March. The day
before they were hanged, three other Iranian Arabs were reportedly executed
in a local prison; and according to overseas-based opposition groups, a number
of other local Arabs face imminent death. Major oil pipelines supplying crude
oil to the Abadan reﬁnery on the shore of the Persian Gulf caught ﬁre a few
days after the hanging of the two men. Iranian ofﬁcials said they could not rule
out sabotage.

Pipelines in Khuzestan were bombed in September 2005, tem-

porarily disrupting supply. In October of that year, Tehran said it had foiled an
attempt to bomb the Abadan reﬁnery with ﬁve Katyusha rockets.

Certain Ahvazi Arab tribal leaders have reportedly been armed by the

regime to help guard oil installations. As a result, they have in-depth knowl-
edge of the pipeline infrastructure, according to the British Ahwazi Friendship
Society, which lobbies on behalf of Iran’s ethnic Arabs. If the current ethnic
repression continues, it is possible that some members of these tribes will at-
tack the installations they were meant to be guarding, the group predicts.

Disruptions to oil supply in Ahvaz could have global economic and political
implications. A major attack on the Abadan refinery, which represents about
30 percent of Iran’s total refining capacity, or Ahvaz’s export pipelines would
severely disrupt both Iran’s oil exports and domestic fuel supplies. Indeed,
global oil prices would shoot through the roof if locals were to strike Iran’s oil
industry with any degree of success. This strategy of economic terrorism has
not been lost on Al Qaeda, which is reportedly shifting the focus of its cam-
paign in the wider Persian Gulf region to sabotaging oil facilities.

Iranian officials have partly blamed the rise in violence in Khuzestan on

exiled separatist groups operating from Iraq and are furious that Canada,
the United Kingdom, and the United States allow opposition groups based
there to operate freely. At least 60 Arabic-language opposition radio and
satellite television stations are beamed into the province from around the
globe. “These groups incite terrorist acts and inflame the situation by spread-
ing false reports,” says Khuzestan’s deputy governor, Mohsen Farokhnejad.
“Why do these Western governments allow them to do this when they claim
to be fighting terrorism?”

All of the main, overseas-based Arab opposition

groups have denounced the recent terrorist attacks. Yet, an analyst with
inside knowledge of the opposition groups said that the National Liberation

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Movement of Ahwaz, a very popular group that operates from Canada and
runs a widely watched satellite TV station, does seem at times to verge on
advocating armed resistance.

Sunni Resistance in Baluchistan

The remote southeastern province of Baluchistan has witnessed similar
unrest and violence. Baluchis have long resented the regime in Tehran.
They say the central government brutally oppresses and neglects the Balu-
chi population, 35–50 percent of whom are unemployed and most of whom
are Sunni.

For years, the Iranian army has been fighting a bloody cam-

paign against organized drug-smuggling networks that run heavily defended
convoys through Baluchistan along the heroin route from Afghanistan to
Europe. The province is particularly crucial for Iran’s national security, as
it borders Sunni Pakistan and U.S.-occupied Afghanistan. Like Khuzestan’s
ethnic Arabs, Baluchis complain of discrimination in the education and
employment sectors and say that manifestations of their local culture are
discouraged.

Also as in Khuzestan, locals claim that a systematic plan

has been set in motion by authorities over the past two years to pacify the
region by changing the ethnic balance in major Baluchi cities.

At least

two political groups, the leftist Baluchistan Liberation Front and the more
centrist Baluchistan Protection Council, claim to be active in the prov-
ince. Both had headquarters in Baghdad before 2003 and, according to
one prominent Iranian exile, may now have transferred to Pakistan.

The

government in Tehran has accused the United States of supporting Sunni
insurgents.

Armed with assorted rifles, hand grenades, and a few antiaircraft guns, the

Sunni rebel group Jundallah has been operating from Iran’s lawless border-
lands for the past four years and claims to have killed 400 Iranian soldiers in
hit-and-run operations.

In January 2006, Abdul Hameed Reeki, the self-de-

clared chief spokesman of the Jundallah, gave a revealing interview while his
organization held eight Iranian soldiers hostage.

Although Jundallah had

only 1,000 trained fighters, he said, it had the dedication needed to defeat
the Iranian army, particularly if the West were to provide some help.

In fact, the Sunni Baluchi resistance could prove valuable to Western

intelligence agencies with an interest in destabilizing the hard-line regime
in Tehran. The United States maintained close contacts with the Baluchis
until 2001, at which point it withdrew support when Tehran promised to
repatriate any U.S. airmen that had to land in Iran due to damage sustained
in combat operations in Afghanistan. These contacts could be revived to sow
turmoil in Iran’s southeastern province and work against the ruling regime,
according to at least one analysis.

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Another option for the Jundallah was to assassinate Iranian leaders, per-

haps even Ahmadinejad himself.

The group had already been accused by

the Iranian government of an attack on presidential security forces before
Reeki made that statement. The semiofﬁcial

Jomhouri Islami

Iranian newspaper

acknowledged on December 17, 2005, that Ahmadinejad’s motorcade was at-
tacked three days earlier by “armed bandits and trouble-makers” on the Zabol-
Saravan highway in Baluchistan.

According to Iranian government ofﬁcials,

one of Ahmadinejad’s security guards and a
locally hired driver died in the attack, and an-
other security guard was injured. Two gunmen
also reportedly died in the ﬁreﬁght.

That same week, however, the Iranian gov-

ernment then released a statement that said
Ahmadinejad was not present at the time of
the attack and that the ﬁreﬁght was not an
assassination attempt on the Iranian presi-
dent. Moreover, government ofﬁcials claimed
that the vehicle that was assaulted was not
part of the president’s caravan and that security guards traveling along the
highway were deployed as part of the security measures for the president’s up-
coming visit. According to a Stratfor analysis of the incident, the “contradic-
tory reports on the incident raise more questions than answers, and are likely
part of a disinformation campaign launched by Tehran to downplay any po-
tential threats against the Iranian president.”

The lack of clarity surrounding

the reports and the delayed statements on what actually occurred, the analysis
concluded, reveal the Iranian regime’s confused state, and it predicted mass
arrests to crush the ﬂedgling resistance movement in Baluchistan.

Unrest stirs in other regions as well. No one has taken credit for ex-

plosions in May 2006 in Kermanshah, home to many of Iran’s 4.8 million
Kurds, but the July 2005 shooting of a young Kurd by security forces led to
demonstrations in several northwestern cities that resulted in civilian and
police officer deaths. In May 2006, thousands of Iranians in several cit-
ies of the province of East Azerbaijan publicly protested after the official
government newspaper

Iran

published the cartoon likening Azeris to cock-

roaches.

The Azeri, a Turkic ethnic group who make up about one-quar-

ter of Iran’s population and who speak a Turkic language shared by their
brethren in neighboring Azerbaijan, are Iran’s largest minority, and they too
are becoming more vocal in their demand for rights such as the freedom to
operate schools in their own language.

Encouraged by the independence of

the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 from the Soviet Union, the level of Az-
eri nationalism in Iran and their demand for greater cultural and linguistic
rights has risen.

t would be a grave

mistake for the
West to attempt to
manipulate Iran’s
ethnic tensions.

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The Western Calculus

Western policymakers have historically paid little attention to Iran’s ethnic
tinderbox but are now taking a greater interest in the country’s internal ethnic
politics, focusing on their possible impact on the Iranian regime’s long-term
stability as well as their inﬂuence on its short-term foreign and domestic policy
choices. According to exiled Iranian activists reportedly involved in a classiﬁed
U.S. research project, the U.S. Department of Defense is presently examining
the depth and nature of ethnic grievances against the Islamic theocracy. The
Pentagon is reportedly especially interested in whether Iran would be prone
to a violent fragmentation along the same kinds of fault lines that are split-
ting Iraq and that helped to tear apart the Soviet Union with the collapse of
communism. U.S. intelligence experts infer, according to one article, that this
investigation could indicate the early stages of contingency planning for a
ground assault on Iran or is an attempt to evaluate the implications of the un-
rest in Iranian border regions for U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq and for Iranian
inﬁltration into Iraq.

U.S. investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh sepa-

rately claimed that the United States already has troops on the ground in Iran,
although some argue that Hersh may have been used by his Washington-based
sources as part of their psychological warfare campaign against Iran.

In October 2005, a conservative, Washington-based think tank held a

conference on Iran that reportedly triggered uproar among exiled opposi-
tion groups and especially among Persian nationalists. The conference was
entitled “Another Case for Federalism?” but its chairman denied it sought
to foment separatism.

It would indeed be a grave mistake for the West to

attempt to involve itself in Iran’s ethnic tensions for short-term political and
military gain. Based on historical precedent, this would likely unleash a wave
of Iranian nationalism and a massive backlash against any minority group
seen as colluding with outsiders. Even the right-wing Iranian exile Amir
Taheri, usually a strong backer of the Bush administration’s interventionist
policies in the Middle East, has warned that although fanning the flames of
ethnic and sectarian resentment is not difficult and that a Yugoslavia-like
breakup scenario might hasten the demise of the Islamic republic, it could
also “unleash much darker forces of nationalism and religious zealotry that
could plunge the entire region into years, even decades, of bloody crises.”

In any case, with the possible exception of the Kurds, none of Iran’s ethnic

groups are presently seeking to secede from the Iranian state. The violence
in remote regions such as Khuzestan and Baluchistan clearly has ethnic
components, but the far greater causes of the poverty and unemployment
that vexes members of those ethnic groups are government corruption, in-
efficiency, and a general sense of lawlessness, which all Iranians, including
Persians, must confront.

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The Bush administration earlier this year asked Congress for $75 million

to promote democratic change in Iran.

Rather than seeking to explicitly use

this money to manipulate ethnic tensions in a futile request to change Iran’s
regime, the money could be used more effectively to highlight to the Iranian
people how struggles for ethnic rights are part and parcel of the struggle for
greater human rights for all Iranians and as part of wide democracy-promo-
tion efforts aimed at fostering a more moderate government. The emphasis
should be on creating partnerships with Iran’s ethnic minorities to stimulate
democracy and promote their situation, not on targeting the regime in Teh-
ran, fomenting riots, or destabilizing the regime or its borders.

Notes

1. Brenda Shaffer, “Iran’s Volatile Ethnic Mix,”

International Herald Tribune

, June 2,

2006, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/02/opinion/edshaffer.php.

2. Sirvan Kaveh, “Iran: Ethnic Tensions and the Regime’s Last Stand,”

KurdishMedia.

com

, June 1, 2006, http://www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=12522.

3. Amir Taheri, “Iran: Ethnic Woes,”

New York Sun

, February 6, 2006, http://www.

benadorassociates.com/article/19305.

4. Abbas William Samii, “Ethnic Tensions Could Crack Iran’s Firm Resolve Against

the World,”

Christian Science Monitor

, May 30, 2006, http://www.csmonitor.

com/2006/0530/p09s02-coop.html.

5. “Iran’s President: U.S. Will Fail to Provoke Ethnic Differences,” Associated Press,

May 24, 2006.

6. “Iran: Parliamentary Think Tank Warns of Ethnic Unrest,” British Ahwazi Friend-

ship Society, January 5, 2006, http://www.ahwaz.org.uk/2006/01/iran-parliamen-
tary-think-tank-warns-of.html.

7. Residents of Khuzestan, interviews with author, March 2006. The villagers asked

that their names not be used and the location of their village not be specified.

8.  Ibid.
9.  Ibid.
10.  Amnesty International, “Iran: Need for Restraint as Anniversary of Unrest in

Khuzestan Approaches,” MDE 13/040/2006 (Public), April 13, 2006, http://web.
amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE130402006?open&of=ENG-IRN.

11. “Iran Bans Al-Jazeera After Riots,”

BBC News

, April 19, 2005, http://news.bbc.

co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4459033.stm.

12. John R. Bradley, “Ethnicity Versus Theocracy,”

Al-Ahram Weekly

, March 16, 2006,

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/786/re7.htm.

13.  Ibid.
14.  Ibid.
15.  “Al-Qaeda Leader Urges Attacks on Gulf Oil Facilities,” Associated Press, De-

cember 7, 2005, http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/12/3c997d85-35f1-4854-
9eec-ccd483c981ef.html.

16. Mohsen Farokhnejad, interview with author, Ahvaz, March 2006.
17. London-based analyst, telephone interview with author, March 2006.

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18. “Iran: Assassination, Confusion, or Disinformation?”

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing

December 20, 2005, http://www.stratfor.com.

19. Iason Athanasiadis, “Stirring the Ethnic Pot,”

Asia Times Online

, April 29, 2005,

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD29Ak01.html.

20. Ibid.
21. Amir Taheri, “Iran: Restive Provinces,”

Arab News

, May 27, 2006, http://www.arab-

news.com/?page=7&section=0&article=82825&d=27&m=5&y=2006.

22. Massoud Ansari, “We Will Cut Them Until Iran Asks for Mercy,”

London Telegraph

January 15, 2006, http://www.lebanonwire.com/0601MN/06011502TGR.asp.

23.  Ibid.
24.  Ibid.
25.  “Iran: Assassination, Confusion, or Disinformation?”
26.  Ansari, “We Will Cut Them Until Iran Asks for Mercy.”
27.  “Iran: Assassination, Confusion, or Disinformation?”
28.  Ibid.
29.  Abbas William Samii, “Ethnic Tensions Could Crack Iran’s Firm Resolve Against

the World,”

Christian Science Monitor

, May 30, 2006, http://www.csmonitor.

com/2006/0530/p09s02-coop.html.

30. Shaffer, “Iran’s Volatile Ethnic Mix.”
31. Nayereh Tohidi , “Iran: Regionalism, Ethnicity and Democracy,”

OpenDemocracy.net

June 26, 2006, http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-irandemocracy/regional-
ism_3695.jsp.

32. Guy Dinmore, “U.S. Marines Probe Tensions Among Iran’s Minorities,”

Financial

Times

, February 24, 2006, p. 2.

33. Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans,”

New Yorker

, April 17, 2006, p. 30.

34.  Dinmore, “U.S. Marines Probe Tensions Among Iran’s Minorities,” p. 2.
35.  Taheri, “Iran: Ethnic Woes.”
36.  Dinmore, “U.S. Marines Probe Tensions Among Iran’s Minorities,” p. 2.