Ethnic Studies

"Abstract
Iran is facing a serious domestic challenge. Non-Persian ethnic minorities are mobilizing to claim their rights under an Islamic Republic, which minority activists claim is systematically neglecting and discriminating against them. Yet contemporary Iranian ethnic politics is severely understudied and media coverage rarely engages with it. This article explores the ways in which ethnicity play into Iranian domestic politics in subtle, intricate and highly important ways. For this purpose, it focuses on how the interconnected factors of ethnicity, regionalism and tribalism figured in the 2013 combined presidential and local council elections in Iran in a particular province that has a history of ethnic tensions. Incidentally, these elections brought Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric, to power as president. Amongst his electoral promises was to end the securitization of the minority issue. This article serves to illustrate some of the barriers to a transformative ethnic politics -- barriers that the new president will have to overcome to enact real change.



Keywords: Iran; minorities; elections; securitization; tribalism; regionalism

In January 2014, newly incumbent president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, was busy implementing a historic deal with Western powers over Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Yet in the middle of this demanding situation, Rouhani took the time to visit a province in Iran’s south-western corner. Meeting with local officials, he stated that ‘domestic politics, with all of the complications that come along with it, is more difficult than international politics’. Apart from an allusion to his domestic conservative adversaries who are wary of his rapprochement with the West, Rouhani also hinted at tensions marring Iranian society. While much attention is paid to external relations and foreign policy, crucial domestic challenges are often overlooked and understudied in the coverage of Iran.

Indeed, why was it so important for Rouhani to visit a province in the periphery? Bordering Iraq, the province of Khuzestan is an extremely sensitive region that contains much of the oil industry generating vital state income. It is also home to ethnic minorities, including a significant and largely discontented community of Arabs. When framed ethnically, Iranian politicians view Arab expressions of discontent as a separatist threat.

Although Iran has been known historically in the West as Persia, non-Persian minorities make up a large segment of the population – about half, according to estimates commonly cited in Western works.  Ethnic minorities such as the Azeris, Kurds, Lors, Gilakis, Arabs, Baluch and Turkmen coalesce around shared notions of kinship, regional belonging and/or a language different from the majority’s Persian. Religious minorities such as Christian Armenians, Jews and Zoroastrians identify in religious terms different from the Muslim majority. The Sunni Muslims among the Kurds, Turkmen, and Baluch are both ethnically and religiously different than the Persian-speaking Shiite majority. Furthermore, several of these communities have historical bonds with co-ethnics in neighbouring countries.

A diverse and growing ethnic movement now challenges the socioeconomic, political and cultural hegemony of the Persian-speaking centre, claiming that the Islamic Republic discriminates against minorities. With its demands for decentralization and ethnic rights, this collective but unorganized ethnic mobilization is perceived as a threat by Iranian nationalists of both secularist and Islamist persuasions, who argue that the movement runs counter to Iran’s national identity, historic unity and territorial integrity. The state has reacted to minority activism with violence and repression. The minority issue, in short, constitutes a key site of contention in Iranian identity politics.

The present article explores the role of ethnicity in voter dynamics during the combined presidential and local council elections in 2013. Through a specific focus on these elections in the province of Khuzestan, I will anatomize the complexity involved in ethnic politics in Iran today.  I argue that apart from as a reflection of growing ethnic awareness, this complexity should also be read within the context of centre/periphery contestation, and with an eye to the role of tribalism. By adding to the preciously few studies of post-revolution Iranian provincial politics,  and by tentatively assessing the prospects of a transformative minority politics, the article will thus help broaden the discussion on obstacles to democratization in Iran."

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