Friday, 03.14.08
Pump Up the Unrest
Photo by BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images
Will Iran be next?
December 2004
Iran: a minority report
December 2006
Graeme Wood provides an introduction to Iran's turbulent patchwork of ethnicities.
Nuclear Iran
September 2006
News of this enfilade of Turkic vibes arrived just as Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) was holding a Washington hearing on the status of Iran's Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, and Baluchis. All these minorities have some grievances against the ayatollahs, but only the Azerbaijanis have yet to resist Tehran in any meaningful way. Not coincidentally, they're also the largest and most powerful minority in Iran: they make up a third of the country's population, and they are the only ethnic minority that could bring down the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately for the U.S., the Azeris really like Iran's current government. Azerbaijanis are more religious than average (Tabriz is a city of mosques), disproportionately approve of theocratic rule, and wield enough clout that other more secular groups -- such as the Kurds -- have complained that Iran is ruled by a "Turkish government."
Are these broadcasts a waste of time? Probably not, although an unenthusiastic endorsement is the most that the broadcasts deserve. America's military options, as nearly everyone recognizes by now, are few and inadvisable, and hat-in-hand negotiations have produced little, and at some cost to the dignity of Iran's negotiating partners. The best the U.S. can hope for is to barrage Iran with dozens of minuscule taunts like this one, and pray that together the annoyances add up to enough to change Tehran's disposition toward bargaining.
Molotov melting potIran's menagerie of testy minorities makes the country far less stable than most Americans realize, writes Brenda Schaffer. |
Escalating unrestThis detailed 2007 Congressional Research Service report finds that oppression of minorities and ethnic agitation in Iran have drastically worsened under Ahmadinejad. |
Oh, behave!In spite of public reports about covert US efforts to facilitate "regime change" in Iran, Laura Rozen finds a more benign State Department-directed "behavior change" effort underway. |
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Graeme, Tabriz is NOT city of mosques, what are your sources? I have lived in that city for most of my life. Also your claim that "Azeris like Iranian government" is wrong. In the last presidential election in Iran, Tabriz and Eastern Azerbaijan Province had the second least participation in the election. And those who did vote, overwhelmingly voted to the only Azeri candidate "Mohsen Mehralizadeh" as he used Azeri slogans in his posters. what you described as "kurd's view of Iran as Turkish government" is absured. Then probably Azeris have protested times against their own government may be, well... for fun! I think Azeri broadcasting to Iranian Azeris is a good development as Azeris badly need alternative news sources and they see US persian broadcast to Iran as sign of apathy towards them. Ofcourse it all depends how free and open this broadcast is gonna be.
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If we really want to have a positive influence on other countries we might start by practicing what we preach.
Posted by Lesley | March 15, 2008 10:56 AM