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In Southern Iran, Was It the Beginning of the End?

Sep 26, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

As tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia could break out into war at any time, here is some background on how tensions got this high. It has now been a year since “at least 29 people were killed and 70 wounded in an attack on a military parade in the Arab Ahvaz region” of southern Iran. “President Hassan Rouhani has called on the country’s security forces to determine who was behind the attack amid competing claims of responsibility.” The full story is here.

Heavily armed gunmen rained automatic weapons fire for over ten minutes on participants of the parade Saturday in Khuzestan province. Most of the victims reportedly belonged to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard.

Iranian TV showed ambulances ferrying dozens of victims to nearby hospitals while survivors could be seen helping those who were injured.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander in charge of Khuzestan province Hassan Shahvarpour told Iranian TV that two of the parade attackers were killed on the spot, one died from his wounds at a hospital and a fourth was arrested.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top officials were shown on Iranian TV leaving another military parade in Tehran, immediately after they were told about the attack in Khuzestan.

Parades were held across the country in commemoration of the start of Iran’s 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

There are conflicting reports over who was responsible for the attack, but both the Islamic State group and a group calling itself the “Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz” claimed responsibility.

Iran accused Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of being behind the attack, supporting the Arab separatists of the “Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz.” According to the Iranians, ISIS had nothing to do with it. Nor was Israel initially blamed (which did not prevent an Iranian spokesman from threatening retaliation, too, against the Jewish state). And behind the Saudis and the Emiratis, the Iranians saw the United States.

The ASMLA’s spokesman Yaqoub Hur al Tastari told the BBC Persian Service the group “did not target civilians,” although Iranian media claimed that several children and journalists were among the casualties.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif wrote in a tweet that “terrorists recruited, trained, armed and paid by a foreign regime” were responsible for the Ahvaz attack. He also claimed that Tehran would hold “regional terror sponsors,” and what he called “their US masters accountable for such attacks.”

The spectacle, caught on tape and put on Facebook, of Revolutionary Guards not responding the gunfire but crouching down in fear, with members of the Revolutionary Guards band even hiding in a sewage ditch, caught on tape and broadcast, was a major humiliation for the regime. It vowed revenge to erase the shame.

What “foreign regime” would have recruited, trained, armed, and paid separatist Arabs in Ahwaz to attack Iranian soldiers in Khuzestan? And what regime has, in Iran’s view, “US masters”? Zarif was, of course, referring to Saudi Arabia, which was already locked in a proxy war with Iran in Yemen. In Iran, the oilfields are located in the southern area of Khuzestan, which is populated by ethnic Arabs. If the separatist Arabs of Khuzestan were to successfully break away from Iran, that would mean the loss to Tehran of almost all of its major oilfields; that can never be allowed to happen.

Iranian media reportedly has accused both Israel and Saudi Arabia of responsibility for the attack, but gave no direct evidence to support the claims.

In later reports, Iran no longer blamed Israel, and accused Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of being behind the attacks by local Arab separatists.

Iranian President Rouhani made no accusations, but called on the country’s security forces to “determine who was behind the attack,” according to Iranian media.

Iran has been a state sponsor of terrorism for a long time, mainly through its support, military and financial, of the Shi’a terrorist group Hezbollah. There are more than 150,000 short-range missiles aimed at Israel from Lebanon, all of them given to Hezbollah by Iran. Yet in this instance, Iran’s own military became the object of a spectacular terrorist attack inside Iran, in its most vulnerable territory, where almost all of the ethnic Arabs in Iran live. The apparent success of this attack only whetted the appetites of the Arab separatists of Khuzestan.

The Iranian military, meanwhile, is still smarting at the humiliation they endured by their panicky ducking for cover. The ferocity of their response — the roundups of Arabs began quickly — only resulted in more anger against their Persian masters by the local Arabs. The Saudis, well satisfied with this attack, were happy to continue to supply their fellow Arabs in Ahvaz with weaponry and financing. It was a most cost-effective way to tie down large numbers of Iranian troops.

Iran is only 61% Persian, and has many disaffected ethnic minorities. These minorities in Iran — including the Balochis, Kurds, Azerbaijanis — could take heart from the Arab attack in Ahvaz.

The Balochi people live in both Iran and Pakistan, and are ill-treated in both countries. They have started a social media campaign against Iran’s mistreatment of the Balochi people, “to highlight the systematic genocide of Baloch nation by the Iranian regime in occupied western part of Balochistan. Lately, the Iranian Shiite Regime has accelerated its atrocities against Baloch people in Iranian occupied Balochistan. The Iranian forces crimes in Balochistan include summary execution of political activists, extra-judicial killings, torture to death, random abduction of political activists, and keeping them incommunicado and subjecting to targeted killings, subjecting the general public to collective punishment. Hundreds of Baloch are languishing in Iranian jails without any access to the due justice system and waiting for their turn to be arbitrarily executed. Hardly there goes a day by that Baloch activists are not killed by unbridled Al Quds, IRGC and Mersad forces of Persian religious regime of Iran.”

Separatists of the Free Balochistan Movement have demonstrated in front of the U.N.; Balochi separatists have been shot dead in Iranian Balochistan. But for the most part the Balochis in Iran have been conducting only a low-level insurgency, nothing for Tehran to worry about. However, that could change quickly.

As for the Iranian Kurds, they are now able to receive arms and other assistance from fellow Kurds in both Syria and Iraq. These arms were either supplied by the American military to their Kurdish allies, to be used against ISIS, or they were weapons that had been left by the Iraqi army in Mosul when it first fled from ISIS, and subsequently were appropriated by Iraqi Kurds when ISIS, in turn, was driven out of Mosul. Iran has been intent on suppressing its Kurds, even bombing a meeting of leaders of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan in Koya, Iraq. This was reported in the Western press as “sending a message” to Washington, Riyadh, and Jerusalem about Iran’s ability to strike at its enemies, but it was also meant to send a message to Iran’s Kurds: don’t even think about rebelling. It’s not a message they have taken in.

Then there are the 15 to 20 million Azerbaijanis. who are the largest minority in Iran. In fact, there are more Azerbaijanis in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan itself. If they chose to rise up, given their numbers, it would be a hellish task for the Iranians to suppress them. They could also receive weapons from the Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan itself, across a porous border, one impossible for Iranian (Persian) troops to control. Weapons could also be supplied, from Azerbaijan, from the Saudis, or the Israelis, or the Americans, all of them eager to see the Iranian theocracy collapse.

The Iranians’ greatest nightmare would be coordination between the four minorities with separatist ambitions — Arabs, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and Balochis — so that they might rise up simultaneously. Iran is plagued with troubles. It has suffered the worst drought in half a century. Agricultural production has plummeted; livestock are dying. The rial lost 60 percent of its value last year. The cost of Iran’s military ventures in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon keep rising. Iranians, fed up with the expense of  these ventures, have taken to streets in major cities, shouting “Death to Palestine,” “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon,” “Syria, Palestine are the cause of our misery,” as well as “Death to Khamenei” and “Reza Shah.” These are not what the ruling clerics want to hear. But they won’t, they can’t, pull back. The war in Yemen grinds expensively on, but they cannot now abandon the Houthis and allow the Saudis to triumph. They may have to settle for an endless stalemate, with each side using up resources, but no definitive conclusion to the conflict. In Syria, with Assad in sight of victory, the Iranians now want some recompense for all they did to help Assad. They want to establish bases in Syria, closer to the Israeli enemy. But Israel is just as determined to foil those plans, and has conducted more than 100 air raids on Iranian sites in Syria, destroying vast amounts of expensive weaponry, especially ground-to-air missiles. Israel has made clear, in statements by its leaders and in its behavior, that it will not hesitate to attack Iranian sites anywhere in Syria.

This is  a time of tremendous economic pressure on Iran. There are the tens of billions in agricultural and livestock losses because of the unprecedented drought. There is the renewal of American sanctions that have prevented Iran from buying $40 billion in American airplanes (which its airlines desperately need), and from selling its products (such as pistachios and carpets) on the world market. The cancelling, by many foreign companies, including Daimler, PSA (which makes Peugeots and Citroens) and Renault, of planned investments in Iran, have also dealt a heavy blow to the economy. Meanwhile, these renewed sanctions have also led to a  collapse of Iran’s oil exports, from 2.7 million barrels per day in May 2018 to 1.5 million barrels per day at the end of September 2018, as former buyers shied away from Iran because of their fear of American sanctions threatened against anyone who buys Iranian oil.

That’s why the successful attack in Ahvaz on an Iranian military parade was so frightening for the regime. While there were street protests in many Iranian cities, these were focused mainly at the regime’s spending abroad. They were not demonstrations of  ethnic discontent and separatism. The attack in Ahvaz was the first major blow against Iran’s military by a disaffected ethnic group. Only 61%  of Iran’s population of 80 million is Persian. The rest consist of more than a dozen ethnic minorities, with the most important being Azerbaijanis (16%), Kurds (10%), Lors (6%), Arabs (2%), and Balochis (2%). All of them, with the exception of the Lors people, have shown separatist desires. The worry for Iran is that, should Arabs in Khuzestan succeed in launching other attacks, this revolt might naturally inspire the Azerbaijanis, the Kurds, and even the Balochis (who, in addition to their ethnic differences, are mostly Sunni and treated badly on that score as well by the Persians) to do likewise.

All of these minorities can call for help from other members of the same ethnic group living outside Iran. The Arabs in Khuzestan obviously have many fellow Arabs to count on, notably in Saudi Arabia, to supply weapons and money to be used against the hated Persian Shi’a. The Azerbaijanis have the independent state of Azerbaijan next door, no longer controlled from Moscow, with a porous border through which weapons, and soldiers, can flow. The Balochis of Iran have fellow Balochis in Pakistan — again, with a porous border — who might, though quiet now, offer support, and if need be refuge, to Iranian Balochis. The Kurds in Iran know there are millions of fellow Kurds, many now well-armed and battle-hardened, just across Iran’s border, in Syria and Iraq. This moment provides a unique opportunity for the Kurds. In Syria, the civil war has sapped the strength of the regime in Damascus, which used to have no trouble keeping its Kurds under tight control. Having enjoyed several years of autonomy, as America’s closest ally against ISIS in Syria, the Kurds in Rojava (in eastern Syria), are not about to relinquish it. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s Arab soldiers killed 182,000 Kurds in Operation Anfal. There was no possibility then, in the late 1980s, of Iraqi Kurds helping Kurds in Iran; they could not even protect themselves against mass murder. In 1991, however, the Americans established an air umbrella over Iraqi Kurdistan, providing cover against air attacks, and when Saddam was overthrown, Iraqi Kurdistan enjoyed an autonomy that it still possesses. The Kurds turned out to be, both in Iraq and Syria, America’s most effective allies against the Islamic State. Supplied both with American weapons, and what they recovered from ISIS, they could help the Iranian Kurds become a potent threat to the regime.

Was the attack on the military parade in Ahvaz a unique event, or is it, as many still hope, and as the Iranian clerics fear, the first shot in a series of separatist volleys to be fired by Arabs, and Kurds, and Balochis, and Azerbaijanis, against an increasingly desperate, improvident,  and frantic regime?

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Iran, Saudi Arabia Tagged With: Ahvaz


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 10:07 am

    A very helpful analysis from Hugh Fitzgerald of the complicated mess of Iran, a country that is actually a collection of ethnicities under the same roof … under the same pseudo-democracy and one-party state.

    Iran fits the description: theocratic fascism. Just think of Nazi German and then imagine it with Hitler as a Muslim.

    • william carr says

      Sep 27, 2019 at 4:13 am

      Iran is the only country in the ME not artificially created by the victorious powers post WW1 out of the former Ottoman Empire. The only other countries which predate that event are of course Lebanon and Israel

  2. mortimer says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 10:13 am

    Hugh Fitzgerald’s provocative question (‘was it the beginning of the end’ of the mullahocracy) is very valid. We must assume that Iranians have reached their breaking point after almost fifty years of Islamo-fascist dictatorship and kleptocracy. There are many different groups in Iran that want to break free of the mullahs. They might have a chance of successful revolution if they could work together, but separately and independently, they are doomed.

    • John Magne Trane says

      Sep 27, 2019 at 4:28 am

      I worry more about the regime trying to restore unity and suppress the dissident side, by attacking abroad.

  3. cornelius says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 10:33 am

    HUGH: Iran is only 61% Persian, and has many disaffected ethnic minorities. These minorities in Iran — including the Balochis, Kurds, Azerbaijanis — could take heart from the Arab attack in Ahvaz.

    RESPONSE: I’ve never read anything regarding separatist sentiment among Azeris. My understanding is that they are fully integrated into Iranian society.

  4. Wellington says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 11:40 am

    While reading this highly informative article by Hugh Fitzgerald I could not help but reflect upon the fact that Obama participated with the pathetic EU, Russia, China, et al. in unfreezing billions of dollars of Iranian assets which had been frozen for decades, thus aiding the barbaric religious thugs who run Iran. Moreover, what Obama did should have been considered a treaty which would have required a two thirds majority approval in the Senate, something that would have never happened (probably wouldn’t have even come close to 50% approval). Instead, Obama acted on his own, unconstitutionally, and passed off this putrid deal with the Iranians as an executive order.

    The Iranian regime is wretched in sundry ways. Obama in his own way was also wretched many times over, including co-sponsoring with Egypt UN Resolution 16/11 which would, effectively, criminalize criticism of religion, thus going directly against the freedom of speech provision of the First Amendment. But to this day Obama is still treated like a rock star and Trump, who had the guts to pull out of the Iranian deal, is vitriolically hated by the people who still adulate Obama. Stupid world. Very.

    • Kepha says

      Sep 26, 2019 at 8:26 pm

      Oh, the O! God protected our United States in that when we finally had a Communist Third World Great Leader, he was a fundamentally lazy man.

  5. James says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 12:09 pm

    The issues are more complicated than I imagined them to be. Well, that is educational. I suppose the attack on the Saudi oil refineries was a sort of blanket retaliation for the attack on the military parade. But they could perhaps have tried diplomatic means. And nuclear weapons are not much use in fighting terrorism.

  6. Infidel says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 1:00 pm

    The thing about Iran’s Arab Khuzestani minority is that they are largely Shia. Having more in common w/ their neighbors in Basra, Karbala, Najaf than they have in Saudi Arabia, where their comrades are persecuted. It shouldn’t be difficult for Teheran to impress on them that they’d have been persecuted had they been living in Saudi Arabia. If the US wants to encourage such a revolt, they should try enlisting Iraq’s support here, rather than Saudi Arabia’s.

    On the other groups, the Kurds and Balochis are the only Sunnis in the population, and they’re not gonna get support from any other country. The Kurds have already seen how even in Iraq and Syria, their comrades have not been supported by anybody in carving out an independent state, so they’re not gonna risk it in Iran, regardless of what happens w/ other groups. In case of the Balochis, both Iran and Pakistan are allied against them. The Azeris, as Cornelius pointed out, are fully integrated in Iran, and a good part of Iranian history, particularly the Safavids, are built around the Azeris: the fact that they’re ethnically Turkic doesn’t matter here. Only there may be some secular Azeris who might wanna join Azerbaijan, but Tabriz ain’t gonna become a part of Azerbaijan.

    Iran can only come apart after the regime falls: it can’t be a prelude to that.

    • ElderlyZionist says

      Sep 26, 2019 at 6:38 pm

      “If the US wants to encourage such a revolt, they should try enlisting Iraq’s support here, rather than Saudi Arabia’s.”

      The Iraqi Shia and their government clearly have no interest in helping the United States subvert their Iranian allies. But I agree that, “Iran can only come apart after the regime falls: it can’t be a prelude to that.” This essay is an exercise in wishful thinking.

  7. jarmanray says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    Hugh, This was one of the best articles I have read concerning Iran. Regarding the Kurds, from the day I first visited beautiful walled city Diyarbakır in the 1980s, I was so impressed with the people’s hospitality and how efficiency of the local government. In 2007 and 2008 I was lucky enough to visit Kirkuk and Erbil where instead of wallowing in misery, the Kurds were establishing excellent hospitals (and invited Christian doctors to practice there), schools and hotels. If the Kurds ever achieved their goal of a unified Kurdistan, the Middle East would have two nations (one being Israel and the other Kurdistan) plowing a path to intellectualism and industrial/high technological advances.

  8. Angemon says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 2:38 pm

    The spectacle, caught on tape and put on Facebook, of Revolutionary Guards not responding the gunfire but crouching down in fear, with members of the Revolutionary Guards band even hiding in a sewage ditch, caught on tape and broadcast, was a major humiliation for the regime.

    http://i.imgur.com/022dQlI.jpg

  9. Gamzu says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 2:42 pm

    The only reason that Iran is Muslim is that it was conquered by an Arab army. You would think the proud Persians, who look down upon Arabs, would find that humiliating. More should be made of this historical fact.

  10. Kepha says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 8:23 pm

    Iran has long been a Persian-Azeri condominium. Many of the senior Shi’ite clerics are Azeri Turks. Indeed, it was the Safavid dunasty, itself of Azeri origin, that made Iran Shi’ite.

    If the Khuzestan Arabs are disaffected, it isn’t necessarily the work of SA or UAE. In any case, Khuzestan is also Shi’ite, and it seems that Sectarian fissures have more salience in the Islamic world than ethnic ones.

  11. gravenimage says

    Sep 26, 2019 at 9:29 pm

    In Southern Iran, Was It the Beginning of the End?
    ……………….

    Muslims are always attacking other Muslims.

  12. roscoe74 says

    Sep 29, 2019 at 7:36 am

    What a shermozzle the Middle East is.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 29, 2019 at 11:03 pm

      It’s because of all the Muslims…

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