Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran

Preface

xiii Preface t h r ough out t h e summer of 2008, in the waning months of the George W. Bush presidency, it was open to question whether the United States would launch military strikes against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities. At the same time, the extent of covert activities within the Islamic Republic to create dissent and possibly topple the governing regime remained obscure. Speculation regarding a potential escalation of covert operations in Iran was fueled by revelations that Congress had appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars the previous year to destabilize the Iranian government, forge internal alliances, and gather intelligence for a potential attack. The expected returns for such an investment included the spawning of antigovernment separatist activity, ethnic insurgency, a “fifth column” of minorities or dissidents, and perhaps the initiation of a government crackdown that would legitimate American intervention to “protect” such groups. Nevertheless, no significant violence or uprising occurred in Iran, and the specter of attack and foreign meddling bolstered Iranian nationalism, if anything. This left few options for a US administration that had long eschewed diplomacy and worn its international alliances thin. As public debate emerged regarding the potential benefits and perils of destabilizing the Iranian government or of bombing nuclear facilities and infrastructure while American military forces were burdened by commitments simultaneously in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, a general consensus developed among scholars of Iranian history and politics that the destabilization of Iran would not come about by means of agitation among the country’s ethnic and religious minorities, whatever xiv | Preface covert actions the United States might initiate. In a July 2008 New Yorker article by investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh that attempted to plot congressional appropriations for covert operations and gauge the potential for military strikes in the waning months of the Bush administration , Professor Vali Nasr succinctly stated why the strategy of attempting to use ethnic minorities to undermine Iran’s government was flawed: “Just because Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue. Iran is an old country —like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran. You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.”1 Although Nasr’s juxtaposition of Iran to Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan is also applicable to neighboring Turkey and Afghanistan, where the status of minorities and issues of ethnicity and allegiance have arguably posed the greatest challenges to political stability and national cohesion, his observations regarding Iranian minorities and nationalism are spoton and accord with the conclusions of other Iran specialists rendered since 2005.2 And yet although such informed commentary attesting to the unique character of Iranian nationalism and the relative loyalty of Iranian minorities is not difficult to find, to date there has not been an in-depth study that explores the history of Iranian nationalism with the primary goal of illustrating and documenting its mass appeal and resonance within Iran’s diverse population. How can we account for the allegiance inculcated via a Persian Islamic–oriented nationalism in a country that has only a 55 percent Persian-speaking majority and hosts substantial populations of linguistic minorities with historic and cultural ties to lands and peoples in bordering regions (Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, Armenians, Arabs, Turkmen) as well as of religious minorities (Sunni Muslims, Christians , Zoroastrians, Jews)? How have modern Iranian regimes—whether royalist, secular nationalist, or Islamist in ideological orientation—sustained the loyalty of the nation’s diverse population throughout wars, invasions, occupations, coups, and revolutions and in the face of persistent outside agitation? Inversely, how have Iranian minorities contributed to the development of Iranian nationalism and deepened their connections Preface | xv to the land and allegiance to political regimes by way of their participation and sacrifices in successive crises and upheavals? What makes Iran so different from its neighbors in this regard? Certainly the process of arriving at a complex understanding of Iranian nationalism requires the deciphering of its various, often competing ideological strains, meanings, and functions within Iran’s majority population of Persian-speaking Shi‘a Muslims. Yet the diversity of Iranian society and the broad appeal of Iranian national identity to the country’s minorities—who themselves use, shape, and...