For Iran, Diversity Could Spell Secession

Twice as many Azeris live in northern Iran as live in neighboring Azerbaijan. So what was the logic of Iran bombing an Azerbaijani airport yesterday? Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, lambasted Iranian forces behind the four-drone attack as “ugly, cowardly and disgusting.” It was his harshest verbal attack on Iran in his 23-year presidency.More worrying to the mullahs, Azerbaijan’s military is on a roll, fresh from winning an irredentist war against Armenia. Mr. Aliyev, a friend of Israel and America, warned Iran that “independent Azerbaijan is a place of hope for Azerbaijanis living in Iran.”Separated by a Russia-Persia treaty in 1828, the Azeri people are split — 10 million live in “North Azerbaijan,” and 20 million live in “South Azerbaijan,” or Iran. Addressing Tehran, Mr. Aliyev said in a national address yesterday: “The Azerbaijani people can be assured that any hostile force will feel the full might of our ‘Iron Fist.’”Iran has 9 times the population and 19 times the territorial size of Azerbaijan. Yet Iranians are alarmed at the prospect of Baku’s battle-tested army charging south to forge a “Greater Azerbaijan.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, alleged yesterday that the drone attack was an Israeli false flag operation, designed to push Azerbaijan into joining the American-Israeli campaign against the mullahs. Azerbaijan supplies Israel with about one-third of its imported oil. Damage at the Nakhchivan International Airport following what Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said was a drone attack carried out by Iran on its exclave of Nakhchivan, March 5, 2026. APOfficials from the three countries have discussed Azerbaijan joining the Abraham Accords. In January, Mr. Aliyev met President Trump at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. Last month, Vice President Vance met with Mr. Aliyev at Baku. Last summer, Mr. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, negotiated a new road and rail corridor, the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.” This is to give America development rights for a route connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave. It was Nakhchivan that was hit yesterday by four drones.Tehran’s nervousness about Azerbaijan reflects a larger Achilles’ heel of any Persian government, whether monarchy or theocracy. Somewhat analogous to ancestral Russians’ position in the Soviet Union at the collapse of communism, only 60 percent of Iran’s 93 million people are Persians. Outside a Persian core there are a welter of non-Persian minorities. If the center loses hold, long-dormant ancestral identities and rivalries could emerge and cripple Iran. President Carter, far left, with King Hussein of Jordan, the Shah of Iran, and the Shahbanou of Iran at Tehran’s Niavaran Palace. Via Wikimedia CommonsThere are historical precedents. After World War II, in 1946, the Soviet Union maintained two puppet states in what is now northwestern Iran: the Azerbaijan People’s Government and the Republic of Mahabad, a Kurdish entity.Today, Azeris account for about 20 percent of Iran’s population. After two centuries under Persian rule, they are fairly well integrated. Iran’s current president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is an Azeri. Azeris are heavily concentrated in Iran’s north, separated from Azerbaijan by a shallow river, the Araz. Resentment festers over bans on teaching in the Azeri language and over jailings of activists, journalists and language campaigners.Iran’s western mountains are home to 9 million Kurds, about 10 percent of Iran’s population. Recognizing their military experience, Mr. Trump recently telephoned several Iranian Kurdish leaders based in Iraq. Seeking to avoid putting American boots on the ground in Iran, administration officials talk about arming the Kurds and providing air support. In a softening-up strategy, Israel is bombing police and military bases in Kurdish Iran. At the same time, Iran fired missiles into three Kurdish camps in Syria. Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post reported that armed Kurdish units have started moving east across the border, into Iran.President Ilham Aliyev leads a Security Council meeting at Baku, Azerbaijan, March 5, 2026. Azerbaijan’s Presidential Press Service via APIran’s Kurds are handicapped by division into at least five opposition groups. They feel that they have been used, then discarded, by successive American governments. Most recently, in January, an American-brokered ceasefire led to a major Kurdish group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, losing American support, giving up two regions of eastern Syria, and joining the Syrian Army.In Iran’s south, the Balochs account for about 5 percent of Iran’s population. They also spill into Pakistan, where their homeland includes about three quarters of Pakistan’s coastline. There the Balochistan Liberation Army claims to field about 3,000 guerrillas.If the Iranian regime starts to fall apart, these ancestry groups could be the first to declare “liberated” areas. One opposition figure, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, fears that drives for autonomy could accelerate into secessionism. “We are all Iranian” is his slogan.“We stand at the threshold of this regime’s fall. Yet we must remain vigilant and prepared, and deny opportunistic forces — those who have long cast covetous eyes on Iran’s soil — the chance to exploit this moment,” he said Tuesday in a Farsi language video posted on X. “You are an inseparable part of Iran’s historical and cultural fabric … I am confident that you will remain steadfast in this covenant. I firmly believe that through national unity and shared resolve, a bright future awaits you and every Iranian.”Calling again and again for national unity, the crown prince offers non-Persian groups an Iran that is secular, federal, and respectful of minority rights. In three weeks, these are to be the themes of the Iran Freedom Congress, a gathering of multiple ancestry groups to be held in London. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, writes a message of condolence for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Iranian Embassy at Baku, March 4, 2026. Azerbaijan’s Presidential Press Service via AP“With the establishment of a government based on the separation of religion from state, founded on the rule of law and equal citizenship rights, you will no longer face discrimination,” Mr. Pahlavi promised Tuesday. “You will be able to live freely, just like any other Iranian, while preserving your identity, and justly benefit from the blessings of a free Iran.”After 47 years of theocratic rule, leaders of Iran’s largest ancestry groups say they want a secular future. However some fear that if the crown prince gains power, he will impose the centralizing, “Persianizing” policies of his father, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.“For many Kurds, his language does not signal national unity but rather echoes the centralizing and repressive policies historically associated with the Pahlavi dynasty,” a Turkish Kurdish foreign affairs analyst, Veysi Dag, wrote Monday in the Jerusalem Post. “Unity cannot be built on rhetoric that appears to replicate historical patterns of exclusion.”

For Iran, Diversity Could Spell Secession

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